Endowment Honours Klassen

Posted by admin on Oct 29, 2005 in Community | 0 comments

The History Alumni Work Scholarship is like a gift that keeps on giving. What started ten years ago as a single donation of $850 has now grown into a full-blown Fellowship worth just over $26,000. This year, the scholarship reached a new stage in its evolution as the scholarship was renamed the John Klassen Fellowship to honour Klassen who is in his 30th year at Trinity Western University.

“He [Klassen] will be retiring soon, and the [History] department thought it would be better to name it after him while he’s still here,” said Bob Burkinshaw, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Klassen admits that he did not expect the honour.

“I was really, really quite surprised,” he said. “I am very humbled by it.”

Up until three years ago, the award had just been building up. Now, the Fellowship awards $1,500 – the interest on the principle of $26,000 – to a student each year. Because it is a work scholarship, the award is divided into a $500 scholarship and $1,000 to go towards paying the student to be a Teaching Assistant.

Burkinshaw explains: “Then [the student] gets work experience in their discipline, and they get to be mentored by a professor.” In addition, the Teaching Assistantship provides a professor with much-needed help.

For both Burkinshaw and Klassen, the main point of the scholarship is to benefit students.

“I’ve always been bothered by the fact that it’s so expensive for students to go to university,” said Klassen. “For the History Department to supply this kind of funding – I can’t think of anything I’d rather see happen.”

Burkinshaw would like to see the amount of the Fellowship double and see the History department award the scholarship to two students. But first, he hopes to increase the amount of the scholarship, as he admits, “$1,500 doesn’t go as far as it used to.” If the endowment reaches a principle of $50,000, the award will increase to $2,500.