Scholarship helps women make a life change

The Ruth T. Kelley Cole Life Change Scholarship was established by sisters Susan Pearce and Ruth Anne Johnston to honor the memory of their mother and help women attain a dream she never fulfilled herself: earning a college degree.

In the mid-1930s, Ruth Kelley went to college for two years, but when her mother died, her father brought her home to help tend to household needs. In time she married, and she devoted her life to caring for her husband, children, and garden.

"She was always sorry that she couldn't go back to college," Johnston said. "She took classes in all sorts of things — hatmaking, carpentry."

Pearce added, "She thought education was the most important thing you could do."

Pearce's daughters Sandra Harris, '01, and Heather Harris, '04, are both recent graduates of the College of Engineering. Today their grandmother's scholarship assists women who are making a career change and studying engineering at OSU.

According to recipient Hilary Rogers, the Ruth T. Kelley Cole Life Change Scholarship couldn't be more appropriately named. "For me, education is a pathway to reaching higher, dreaming bigger, and living a richer and more fulfilling life," she said. "Pursuing an ecological engineering degree is opening doors for me to a larger world, one that I once only imagined I could be part of."

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