Scholarship renamed for monk

The annual Healy-Conlin family scholarship, which awards two CSB+SJU first-year students with a scholarship that lasts through the remainder of their college career, has been renamed to honor the late Fr. Rene McGraw.

The scholarship is now called the Fr. Rene McGraw Community Engagement Scholarship and was officially announced at the Healy Scholars dinner held this past Tuesday, where all current recipients are honored with the Healy-Conlin family and other CSB+SJU community members in attendance.

CSB+SJU alums Kevin and Roseanne Healy created the scholarship in 2006 in consultation with their son Luke Healy and daughter-in-law Brenda Conlin, who are also CSB+SJU alumni.

McGraw had an extremely close bond with the Healy-Conlin family and helped implement and sustain the scholarship program until his death last November. He served on the scholarship selection committee in addition to being a faculty resident and a philosophy and peace studies professor.

Peace studies professor Jeff Anderson worked on the selection committee with McGraw and is a strong supporter of the name change. He said that McGraw cared deeply about engagement through creative action, something that Anderson thinks is vital to this scholarship.

“It allows for a range of engagement, from elevating intellectual engagement among students, to social justice work, to deeply creative individual pursuits of passion, to spirituality and gender,” Anderson said via email. “Things that [McGraw] cared deeply about in his final months require engagement… from saving the environment, to saving philosophy, to cultivating a love for peace and justice.”

Associate Vice President for Institutional Advancement Troy Fritz also worked closely with McGraw to help coordinate the scholarship over the years. He said the family wanted to rename the scholarship after McGraw years ago, but he always declined.

“There have been people who wanted to do things in his honor while he was alive, but he was always resistant to it with that Benedictine humility,” Fritz said. “So many people loved him. He challenged you with thinking and being a good person. He was a role model and a mentor, as well as a spiritual advisor.”

The scholarship, which is intended to promote creative and intellectual potential across all disciplines, provides recipients with $3,000 every year starting their sophomore year and automatically renews each year provided that the recipients continue to meet the required criteria. The original scholarship was given exclusively to SJU students but became available to CSB students in 2021 when the family expanded it to include both institutions.

The new winners for 2023 are SJU first-year Finn Dolezal and CSB first-year Elaina Jones. They join the ranks of current recipients: CSB sophomore Madeline Lenius and SJU sophomore Antonio Thompson, CSB junior Mahina Melim and SJU junior Tom Hobday and SJU seniors Samuel Rengo and Jervon Sands.

Rengo and Sands were featured during the Healy Scholars dinner, where the graduating scholarship recipients have an opportunity to present on their experiences.

When creating his presentation for this portion of the banquet, Rengo said he wanted to highlight how his political science and history courses at CSB+SJU, his athletics and extracurriculars and his future plans with the Benedictine Volunteer Corps have prepared him to make a difference in his future. Rengo said receiving this scholarship has helped him experience things during his time at CSB+SJU that he couldn’t have done without it.

“Financial assistance from [this] scholarship has allowed me to pursue many opportunities at CSB+SJU such as study abroad in Italy, the Washington, D.C. summer internship program and the trip to the United Nations Climate Conference,” Rengo said via email.

Sands said this scholarship has encouraged him to explore creative outlets like poetry and photography. He said his presentation at the banquet reflects the creative works that he pursued during his time at CSB+SJU.

“It’s a compilation of the different projects I’ve done over the years, as well as my performances and my poetry,” Sands said. “Some of those projects include my sustainable fashion photojournalism project from when I was in London, my global climate policy research from when I went to Egypt and my thesis project.”

Sands said he remembers meeting McGraw during his application process and said they had a meaningful conversation about how Sands planned to expand beyond his physics major into his other creative interests, which he believes is a huge part of the college experience.

“Regardless of what your major or track is, you are at a liberal arts college, so it’s important to take those opportunities to explore those outlets and maybe find something that you really love that you wouldn’t have known you had a talent for,” Sands said.

Laura Schmitz, the office coordinator for the communication, philosophy and Integrations Curriculum departments has helped organize the application process for this scholarship since 2006. She knew McGraw well and said that his legacy will remain intact through the individuals that receive this scholarship, their community work and their creative and intellectual endeavors.

“[McGraw] was a wonderful person and true Benedictine. He had a wonderful way of listening with the ear of his heart and asking just the right questions to help people understand things in a new or different light,” she said via email. “Changing the name of the scholarship would be an opportunity for us to honor [McGraw’s] legacy while continuing to remind us of the work he did both for the scholarship and CSB+SJU.”