Oaklawn Foundation awards 121 scholarships to students
The Oaklawn Foundation Scholarship Committee last week awarded 121 scholarships for a total amount of $369,000, and recipients will be notified this week.
“It is a joy and a thrill to be able to honor 121 students,” Kerry Lockwood Owen, Oaklawn Foundation Scholarship chair, said.
This year was different because of the economic times the community has faced during the pandemic, she said, noting the committee has evaluated many recipients they can give scholarships to for the coming year.
“This year, we have budgeted 118 $3,000 scholarships and three $5,000 scholarships,” Owen said.
The three $5,000 scholarships represent a higher gift value because they honor the memory of the people they are named after, she said.
Owen said she has a great team of people to work with, who were willing to put their heads together to work around everybody’s safety and social distancing.
She said she could not have 30 people in a room evaluating the scholarships this year because of COVID-19. The committee decided since they use the Hot Springs Area Community Foundation for their computer work to divide up the applications.
“My team of evaluators would have packets of applications delivered to their home three times a day, for two days. So a team would deliver a packet, pick it up three hours later, give them another packet, three hours later, give them another packet. So within two days, we were able to (go through the applications),” Owen said.
“Once (the evaluators) had evaluated (the applications), then they take the packet bags, and start putting the numbers in
the computer. It’s the top scores that received the scholarship,” she said.
HSACF took all the applications and put the scores in a computer, and ranked them numerically, she said, with the top three receiving the $5,000 scholarships and the top 118 receiving the $3,000 scholarships.
The committee has roughly over 300 applicants that have applied for the scholarships, she said.
“During a pandemic, with all of the fears we had, with the worry that the financial difficulties that have been coming on, we had set aside (the money) for the Oaklawn Foundation scholarship recipients last year,” Owen said.
“We had it set, we just had to figure out a way to review the applications, put it all together, and keep everybody safe and healthy,” she said.
The committee started giving scholarships in 2007, she said, awarding 16 the first year.
The Cella family created the Oaklawn Foundation in 2006, gifting the nonprofit organization with $1 million, at the time the single-largest gift ever made to a Hot Springs charity. The foundation was created after Hot Springs voters narrowly approved a measure to allow expanded electronic games of skill at the track in November 2005.
The Oaklawn Foundation is also sustained by a percentage of moneys generated from the gaming expansion.
The foundation focuses primarily on two areas — education and aging — but has made substantial grants to selected nonprofit organizations, primarily for their construction projects, including the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts, Garvan Woodland Gardens, Mid-America Science Museum, and the Garland County Historical Society.
“It got started on a promise from the Charles Cella family who owns Oaklawn Racing and Gaming, that they wanted to honor the community for supporting Oaklawn in ways that would mirror across the board of our population,” Owen said.
“The evaluation process was completed Thursday, and the scholarship winners have been selected. The next step is … Wednesday. A notification will go out to every student that applied, whether they received a scholarship or not, and we want to encourage them to come back and try again,” Owen said.