Theater Department Chair and Professor Elizabeth Lewandowski announced the creation of the Laura Jefferson Acting Scholarship during an alumni reception after last Saturday’s performance of August: Osage County, which starred Jefferson as Violet, the show’s lead. Lewandowski said the scholarship is the best way to honor Jefferson’s commitment to the department and its students.
“It’s a way of continuing to make a difference after she leaves this place. People who have become educators do it because we have a passion for sharing our passion for whatever it is, accounting, mathematics, biology, or in my case, theater,” Lewandowski said. “For Laura to have a scholarship named for her means there is, beyond her time at the university, a direct impact on the students at this school.”
Lewandowski said the scholarship fund needs $10,000 before it can be endowed.
“It just seemed to me that that was the appropriate way to honor Laura. I knew that there were hundreds of alums out there that would support that and they would be willing to put their money where their mouth was,” Lewandowski said. “And I’m not expecting anyone to write a check for $10,000, but if everybody who learned from Laura gave $50, we’d get there, really, pretty quickly and surpass our goal.”
Laura Jefferson, associate professor of theater, said the announcement came as a surprise.
“I was shocked. She told me that her goal was to make me cry at some point through this whole process of doing the show and stuff, and I almost did, but then I got it back. I’m not a crier, I don’t like to cry in public. Unless I’m acting,” Jefferson said.
Although Lewandowski said she didn’t meet her goal of coaxing tears out of Jefferson, she said Jefferson’s reaction was worth the effort of keeping the scholarship a secret.
“It was fun actually, keeping it from her, because I wanted it to be a big surprise for her,” Lewandowski said. “I actually thought maybe she would cry. She said she teared up a little bit, but mostly she was just stunned. It was really a big surprise, and that’s what most mattered.”
Lewandowski said she originally planned to announce the scholarship at an alumni reunion next May, but decided to announce it last week in hopes the fund would reach endowment by next fall.
“Our goal is to be able to help a student who is an acting student because Laura teaches acting and directing. So performance majors, hopefully, will be able to not have to have an outside job,” Lewandowski said. “It may initially not be a large one, it may be something that grows with time as additional funding goes into it. Right now our departmental scholarships range from about $600 to $1,500 a semester so I’m hoping there will be enough for it to fall into that range, but we won’t know until it has time to accrue some interest and see how it grows.”
Lewandowski said a lot of the details have yet to be worked out, but the theater faculty will work with Jefferson before she retires to finalize the scholarship requirements.
“We, the theater faculty, will be meeting with Laura to talk about what sort of qualifications a candidate should have because I’d like her to have a say in it before she retires,” Lewandowski said. “At present, it is set up so that donations through the annual fund that are designated for the scholarship can go directly into the scholarship fund. And that’s an easy way to track the donations.”
Jefferson and Lewandowski both said the scholarship is important to financially help theater students who often don’t have much time for a job.
“More and more you see students putting themselves through college, and being a theater major is so different from being a business major or history major. I often compare it to being a nursing major because nursing majors have to spend a lot of outside time. They don’t have time to have a job, really,” Jefferson said. “Because our students go to class in the morning and then we work on the shows in the afternoon 1-5 p.m., and at night we have rehearsal, but they’re still held to class time.”
Jefferson said the scholarship will also help the department recruit potential students, which Jefferson said has become highly competitive.
“It’s just as hard as recruiting athletes, it really is,” Jefferson said. “Abilene Christian can offer them a full ride. Well we can’t. We try to help as many as we can, but we can’t offer full rides.”
