Education: RCCC instructors get grants to 'internationalize' business classes
Published 12:00 am Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Frank Higginbotham and Nancy Whittaker, business administration instructors at Rowan-Cabarrus Community College, have received grants of $750 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Center for Global Initiatives and World View Program.
The two are using the grants to add international content to, or “internationalize,” business/finance and marketing principles courses at Rowan-Cabarrus.
The grant program is funded by the Center for Global Initiatives and organized by World View. Each grantee receives $750 to compensate for time spent and offset costs for a trip to UNC-Chapel Hill for research. Higginbotham and Whittaker spent a day at UNC working with specific librarians and faculty arranged by World View.
The intention of the grant program is to support the addition of international content to existing courses that lack it. Preference is given to proposals that enhance regularly taught or required courses and courses taken by large numbers of students.
Harrison Scholarship
Patricia A. Wayne, a first year, associate degree nursing student at Rowan-Cabarrus Community College, has received the Susan Elaine Harrison Memorial Scholarship.
Wayne, a Salisbury resident, is a graduate of Waldorf Pemberton High School in Waldorf, Minn., and employed at Salisbury Flower Shop. She is the daughter of Kathy Krouse of Janesville, Minn.
She is the 13th recipient of the endowed scholarship program established in 1995 in memory of Susan Harrison by her family.
Donor identified
For years, dozens of needy students at Catawba College received scholarship assistance thanks to an anonymous donor. Now, more than five years after her death, they and future students will know to whom they need to be thankful.
Eva Burke Clapp, of Burlington, a frugal, hardworking woman, began making gifts to Catawba to provide scholarship assistance to students with demonstrated need approximately six years before her death in February 2002. But with those gifts came the stipulation of her anonymity, which was to remain in place until five years after her death.
“Now that we have exceeded the five-year stipulation, we can publically acknowledge the generosity of the late Eva Burke Clapp,” explained Catawba Senior Vice President Tom Childress. “Although Mrs. Clapp did not attend Catawba, she was an active member of First Reform United Church of Christ in Burlington and appreciated the mission of higher education institutions like Catawba, which has historic ties to the United Church of Christ.”
Clapp’s family owned and operated Burke Funeral Home. She was active in First Reform United Church of Christ, walking to services each week. It was in the church youth group that she met her husband, Marvin Clapp. The two were married in 1927 and settled in Burlington.
After her marriage, she volunteered with the Red Cross and attended secretarial school in Burlington before going to work in a law firm in town. Eventually, she became secretary to J. Spencer Love, the founder of Burlington Industries, where she worked for more than 30 years. She often accompanied Love to his offices in Greensboro and New York and to Florida, where he vacationed. She was remembered as a conscientious, hard-working professional on whom her boss relied.
Her husband, Marvin, also worked at Burlington Industries where he rose through the ranks before retiring as an administrative manager. He was a savvy investor and built a sizeable estate, while Eva handled the couple’s financial affairs. Both were frugal with their money.
Today at Catawba, the Eva Burke Clapp Endowed Scholarship Fund stands as a testament to her generosity.
SunGard partner
Catawba College is one of eight higher education institutions selected as development partners for the student retention portion of SunGard Higher Education’s Enrollment Management software suite, according to Catawba’s Chief Information Officer Joanna Jasper.
In addition to Catawba, other institutions tapped to serve as development partners include Johnson County Community College, Lehigh University, Old Dominion University, Raritan Valley Community College, Metropolitan State College of Denver, University of San Diego and Texas Tech University.