Scholarship Reception Celebrates Student Accomplishments and Foundation Donors

Publish Date: Aug. 14, 2025

On Thursday, August 14, in its Road Runner Café, Craton Hills College celebrated the academic accomplishments of its high-performing students and expressed its appreciation to the donors who fund student scholarships.

The event began with a welcome from Michelle Riggs, Director of Institutional Advancement. Riggs confided that she holds this event in her heart, being a CHC scholarship recipient herself in 2007, when she was a student at the college.

School president Dr. Kevin Horan then welcomed attendees and thanked donors for their financial support. He announced that CHC’s Financial Aid Office distributed $250,000 in student financial support.

Leslie Wessels, chair of the Foundation’s Scholarship Committee, spoke of the event bringing together scholarship recipients and donors to appreciate the positive effects of the Foundation’s financial support.

Table places had been arranged so that student scholarship recipients, donors, and Foundation board members could chat, while scholarship recipients’ pictures and bios appeared on the screen above the speaker’s podium and in program booklets at the tables.

Judy Cannon, CHC’s Honors Program Coordinator, explained how Honors has grown from 40-50 students in 2016, when she began in her position, to 170 current participants. The program provides opportunities for exceptional students to present their research projects at state level conferences. She also credited the Raymond Pryke Foundation for contributing $270,000 to support the CHC Honors program.

The event reached its climax as scholarship recipient Jazmyn Garcia spoke about how much receiving scholarships meant to her. Garcia explained that she was an average student through high school and did not attend college right after she graduated. After a rough life that found her homeless for a time, she enrolled at CHC in 2023 and began a remarkably successful educational career as a biology major. She explained that the scholarships she was awarded not only provided much needed financial help but also gave her confidence in her abilities as she was elected as CHC’s student member of the district’s governing board.

The event concluded with Foundation President Amy Minjares thanking donors for the funding of scholarships and for their attendance.

For information about CHC scholarships, visit https://www.craftonhills.edu/visitors-and-alumni/giving-to-chc/index.php.