Monday, September 11, 2006
Supporting Academic Research
Back in July I was I happy to announce that I had received the Michael H. Bruno/TAGA scholarship from the Print and Graphics Scholarship Foundation (PGSF); the second year in a row that I was to receive this honor.
Not only was I gracious to receive financial support to offset the cost of tuition, I was honored to receive a scholarship named after an individual for whom I have great respect.
For those not familiar with who Michael H. Bruno was, he was an early employee at the Lithographic Technical Foundation (Now PIA/GATF), editor of The Pocket Pal for many years, and a Co-Founder of the Technical Association of the Graphic Arts. Through his efforts, he helped advance offset lithographic technology, making it a viable and commercially successful printing process. Bruno was a printing industry visionary.
Scholarship Pulled
Unfortunately, three days into the new school year I was informed that the $1,500 dollars in scholarship money awarded to me was being pulled. I was informed I did not meet the credit criteria (enrolled with 12 credits or more) of the scholarship set by the PGSF Board of Directors. PGSF was not accepting my full time equivalent status, a classification given to graduate students at RIT stating that their thesis work is equivalent to 12 credit hours or more.
I was awarded this scholarship under the same circumstances last year without incident
Pulling scholarship funding from a graduate student seems to go against PGSF's core mission to strengthen the print and graphics industry by providing scholarship assistance. Graduate students undertaking thesis research are involved in timely scientific investigations and inquiries into the problems faced by the industry. Their work extends our current knowledge of the state of the art and strengthens the industry by helping create a foundation of scholarly work that fuels the scientific process.
Posted in: Scholarship | Thesis
