Financial assistance available through performance grants

     Each year the Department of Mass Communication has available several performance grants ranging from a few hundred dollars to $1,000 or more.

     Students must meet certain financial requirements to qualify. Those who do qualify and are rewarded a performance grant, perform a variety of tasks such as supervising the department's Macintosh computer lab or working at the on-campus, low-power television station, TV-4.

     Contact Stan McKinney, lead professor of the department, for more details.

$500 scholarship presented each year

     Each fall, the Department of Mass Communication awards a $500 scholarship to either a journalism, public relations or cinema/television major.

Stan and Joan McKinney

     To apply for the scholarship, a student is required to write an essay discussing why he or she deserves the scholarship and what he or she hopes to accomplish through a career in the mass communication field.

     Known as the Stan and Joan Cottongim McKinney Mass Communication Scholarship, it was first awarded in the fall of 2007 to Heather Marie Campbell Hensley from Waynesburg, Pa.

     Guidelines for the scholarship give first priority to be to a journalism student, then a public relations student and finally a cinema/television student. This criterion was established by the McKinneys because of Stan McKinney’s background as a journalist and Joan McKinney’s background in public relations.

     The endowment fund established by McKinney and his wife Joan is growing. The fund must total at least $10,000 before it will earn enough interest to pay the annual scholarship.

     McKinney is contributing $500 each year to fund the scholarship and $250 each year to the endowment fund.

     The McKinneys have also made the endowment fund a beneficiary of their life insurance policies.

     “In the event of either of our deaths,” McKinney said, “the endowment fund will be fully funded. We hope that won’t happen for many years but wanted to take steps to ensure that the scholarship will continue after we are gone.”

     Donations to the endowment fund are accepted. Contact Benji Kelly in the office of development for details, 270-789-5061. Or you can donate on line by clicking here.