What was the inspiration behind the George Floyd Scholar Program?
During the George Floyd memorial service, which took place in Minnesota, Dr. Scott Hagan, who's the president of North Central University, where the funeral memorial service was being hosted, announced that they would establish a “George Floyd Memorial Scholarship” there at the university. And he essentially presented a challenge to every university president in the United States to establish a similar Scholarship Fund. The wheels of my mind started to turn. I remember sending a text message to our president and sort of initially telling her what I just heard. We also got some messages from some campus faculty. I remember Dr. Desmond Murray, in particular, from our Department of Chemistry reached out and stated that this is something that we needed to think about doing. So that was really the initial spark which led to a more conversation around us creating the scholarship fund.
Could you summarize how the scholarship works?
Prior to the fund being established, the University was already disseminating what are called “Dare to Dream Scholarships”; that's a fund that has been going on for a few years now. So each year through “Dare to Dream” I believe we offer five scholarships at varying levels to students who reflect different criteria. So we look at need and we also look at students who have a passion for issues of justice or things of that nature–that is a part of the George Floyd component. We also have disseminated scholarships to folks, for example, who participate in different campus initiatives and clubs or things of that nature. The George Floyd scholarship
fund really works under the umbrella of those “Dare to Dream” scholarships that go to a diverse set of students every year based upon different criteria to help us to continue to number one,
meet the needs of folks who are wanting to pursue their degree and their education here at Andrews, and number two, trying to find creative ways to make that more possible. For a diverse set of people in our student body
You touched on this a bit earlier but in what ways are you hoping the program can impact Andrews University and the students who are chosen?
Our first George Floyd Scholar is Jennifer Jean and she's a freshman biology major and as she stated in her essay which led to her selection for the scholarship. She talked about the fact that her family has had some struggles and she was actually praying about the finances for her first year here at Andrews, and she's done a lot of really good community work. She talks about that in her essay. She also has done some events locally where she lived, focusing on emotional, mental and spiritual health and things of that nature. We saw her definitely as someone who would be able to impact our university from the standpoint of helping students to continue raising their voices for issues of joy, justice and things of that nature. The scholarship is really a reflection of a critical moment in our country’s history, our world's history even, because this really became a sort of a global moment. So we're hoping that students who participate in the Scholar Program will be the same kinds of change agents on our campus that will motivate students and others to speak up and speak out on issues of justice.
With everything in our country being so tumultuous right now, what do you believe is the role of the Adventist church among all of it?
That’s a great question. I mean, I think our role is to be the hands and feet of Christ. You know, I think we have a great message in our church, we do a lot of theorizing and preaching and there's lots of good theoretical and theological concepts that we talk about. Now it's time to be about those things to the people in the world that so desperately need it and to speak up unapologetically on issues of justice. This is not a side issue to the gospel of Jesus Christ, it's central to the gospel and so in our unique framing of that gospel message with the Three Angel's Message–which I believe really is a call to justice, equity, fairness, and to the unifying nature of the everlasting gospel of Christ–I think it's our duty as Adventists to proclaim that message.
The Student Movement is the official student newspaper of Andrews University. Opinions expressed in the Student Movement are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors, Andrews University or the Seventh-day Adventist church.