[nabs-l] a summary of tonight's NABS membership call

[Chris Nusbaum]

Hello fellow NABS members,

As we do every month, the National Association of Blind Students
(NABS) has a membership conference call, in which we pick a topic to
discuss and possibly have guest speakers to talk about that topic, in
an effort to provide more information to blind students about topics
of interest to us. This month's call, entitled All About Scholarships,
was no exception. For those of you who were not able to attend the
conference call or listen to the stream of it live on Audio Access FM,
I am providing a short summary of the things discussed and the
information provided in tonight's call.

This month, the topic for our membership call was "All About
Scholarships." As many of us know as blind students, scholarships are
very important to us if we plan on going to college, so this is an
important topic. To tell us about their organization's scholarships,
we had 3 guest speakers on tonight's call: Patti Gregory-Chang, Chair
of the Scholarship Comittee (at the national level) for the National
Federation of the Blind; Mark Lucas, Executive Director of the United
States Association of Blind Athletes, and Melissa Greenwald of
Learning Ally, formerly RFB&D. First up was Patti Chang, to talk about
the 30 scholarships the NFB offers for blind college students. These
scholarships range in value from $3000 to $12000 and anyone who is
legally blind and who is registered at an accredited college can
apply. As Patti discussed in her portion of the call, an applicant
must have these requirements: (1) an applicant must be legally blind
in both eyes (2200 or worse in best eye,) (2) the applicant must have
a completed application, (3) must be registered at an accredited
college or university (online schools, if accredited, do count) and
must be there to earn a degree, and (4) a finalist must attend the
full national convention of the Federation in Dallas from June 30 to
July 5, 2012. Applications for NFB scholarships can be either filled
out online or downloaded and mailed in as a print application. The
link to the NFB scholarship page, where you can fill out or download
the application, is www.nfb.org/scholarships. If you have any
questions about the NFB scholarship program, you can email Patti Chang
at pattichang at att.net or the scholarships email, which is
scholarships at nfb.org. If you need any further assistance, you can call
Loraine Rovig at the national center.

Our next speaker was Mark Lucas, Executive Director of the United
States Association of Blind Athletes (USABA,) to talk about the
scholarships they provide. These scholarships are called the Arthur
and Helen Copeland Scholarship Awards, and are given to 1 male, and 1
female blind college student. The only requirements USABA has for
eligibility for the scholarship program is that the applicant must be
legally blind and must be a college student in an accredited college.
The application for their scholarship can be found at www.usaba.org.
If you have any questions, you are encouraged to contact Mark Lucas by
email at mlucas at usaba.org.

Our final speaker was Melissa Greenwald of Learning Ally, formerly
Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic (RFB&D.) They offer scholarships
to deserving blind college students as well. The requirements to be
eligible to receive the Learning Ally scholarships are the same as
those of the other scholarships I have mentioned, with this exception:
to be eligible for the Learning Ally scholarship, you must have a
grade point average (GPA) of at least 3.0 on a 4.0 scale, or something
equivalent to that if your school does not follow that scale for
GPA's. The application for the Learning Ally awards can be either
filled out online or downloaded and printed in Microsoft Word or PDF
format from www.learningally.org/awards. If you have any questions
about the Learning Ally award program, email Mellisa Greenwald at
mgreenwald at learningally.org.

With that information, the call concluded, and so does this summary. I
hope this summary helped those of you who were unable to be on the
call. If you would like to listen to the call itself, David Dunphy
recorded it and will be posting it to the NABS Web site within a few
days. In the meantime, I hope you found this summary to be beneficial!

Thanks,

Chris Nusbaum

-- 
Chris Nusbaum

"The real problem of blindness is not the loss of eyesight. The real
problem is the misunderstanding and lack of education that exists. If
a blind person has the proper training and opportunity, blindness can
be reduced to a mere physical nuissence." -- Kenneth Jernigan

Visit the I C.A.N. Foundation online at: www.icanfoundation.info for
information on our foundation and how it helps blind and visually
impaired children in MD say "I can!"