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SCHOLARSHIPS HELP STUDENTS SUCCEED |
Colleen Villier
Scholarship made life "a whole lot easier"
The ties that bind Pat Wilburn to Speed Scientific School are deep and strong. Now the connection that began with her father, a founding professor of the school, and continued through her husband extends to a new generation of engineering students like Colleen Villier.
Villier, a chemical engineering major in Speed Scientific School, made good grades last spring, partly because financial assistance from the Wilburn-Shipman Scholarship enabled her to concentrate on her studies instead of how she was going to pay her way through school. "It makes it a whole lot easier," Villier says. "I used the scholarship to pay for my housing and food last year. It helped pay for my books too." The assistance, plus another scholarship, freed her from having to juggle a job with her semester's coursework. By living on campus instead of in her Jeffersontown, Ky. home, Villier says she was able to reach classes quickly and study with classmates in her residence hall. \ Wilburn never lived on campus but did make childhood visits when her father, Frank Shipman, taught chemistry and later chemical engineering. "I just grew up loving U of L," she says. Her husband, Jack, studied civil engineering at Speed after World War II service. Choosing to endow a Speed scholarship for native Kentuckians was the couple's joint decision before his death. "I think it's a very demanding school," Wilburn says of Speed. "Everything you can do to help students is important. It's just a question of giving help when you can to students who would not be able to go otherwise."
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