Past Issues

New scholarship fund created for students with disabilities

by Rick Moore

Harvey Johnson has never forgotten his challenging year at the University of Minnesota dealing with seizures or the positive experiences he had in high school interacting with students with disabilities. So in 1989, after his 50-year Marshall High School class reunion, Johnson and his friends took some leftover money and began soliciting contributions for a scholarship fund for students with disabilities.

The pot started with $286. Fourteen years later, through numerous individual gifts of $20 to $100, the Marshall Access Education Fund (MAEF) sits at approximately $9,000. Now managed by the University of Minnesota Foundation, the fund would be the first of its kind targeted to provide scholarships and other support at the University for students with disabilities.

"We're very excited," says Evonne Bilotta, sign language interpreter in the U's Disability Services office. "That this organization is trying to give to the next generation is very exciting. I think it's a wonderful trend in the disability services arena—that people are thinking of this as a population that needs support."

The first goal is $10,000, at which point MAEF becomes a quasi-endowment fund. At $25,000, the fund will reach full endowment status, and money gained on interest can be used for scholarship assistance, Bilotta says. A MAEF committee has been set up to explore fund-raising and determine goals, depending on how much money is eventually collected. "Besides the scholarships, we want to give students with disabilities opportunities for learning, like writing support and leadership," she says.

Down the road, if it continues to grow, Bilotta hopes the fund might be used to conduct disability awareness trainings on campus, bring in outside speakers to give presentations, and develop an academic curriculum in disability studies.

Johnson, 83, grew up with epilepsy and suffered from frequent grand mal seizures. (One grand mal seizure, he points out, can have the energy potential of 80 hours of physical labor.) While at the University, Johnson would have as many as six seizures in a day, which is not exactly conducive to carefree learning. Though he was only able to stay at the U for one year, he went on to work at Northwest Airlines until 1970 and then at the IDS Building until 1983.

Johnson graduated from Marshall High School in Dinkytown, which merged with University High School in 1968. (Marshall U High School closed in 1982 and the building is now the University Technology Center.) He says that virtually all students will disabilities in the Minneapolis School District attended Marshall U. "At the time, none of the other schools had any elevators," Johnson says. "And Marshall U had the teachers who were trained to deal with the students with disabilities—not only orthopedic but visual."

Many Marshall U High School students went on to attend the University, Johnson points out, and he's confident that word of the scholarship fund will trigger their memories. "They're going to get some response from people from Marshall U who didn't know anything about this fund," he says.

Although Johnson has been virtually seizure-free for 45 years now, he's committed to helping those with any disability to flourish at the University. "We just want to give them the opportunity everybody else has for education and [the] extension of their minds," he says.

For more information on the Marshall Access Education Fund, visit http://ds.umn.edu/maef.