1) Full-time returning sophomore, junior, or senior student pursuing a degree in dance within the College of Liberal Arts 2) Demonstrate financial need as established by the Office of Student Financial Services of CSU 3) Demonstrate outstanding skill, commitment, and professionalism in dance as well as exhibiting a broad-based interest in multiple facets of dance including educational and service outreach 4) Demonstrate leadership skills and willingness to mentor 5) Maintain an overall 3.2 GPA
History
Grace and Dwight Harris: lifelong supporters of the arts, education, and the great outdoors. A strong Welsh heritage ensured that Dwight Harris was musically gifted. In due time he attended Washington State College – a land grant College where he soon added his tenor voice to a church choir. Lessons from an opera singer led to solo roles and he also took to ballroom dancing. Desire for more education brought Dwight to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which led to a Teaching/Research position at the University of Wisconsin. As a scientist, later positions took him to Montana, Death Valley, New Jersey, and Los Angeles. Wherever he lived, Dwight enjoyed attending concerts, singing, and supporting the arts. As a child, Grace remembers full moon nights when she lay in her mosquito netted bed and listened to drums and gourd marimbas being played in the villages near her missionary parents’ African home. Later, Grace received her Bachelors and Masters degrees in biology at Swarthmore College and Connecticut Wesleyan, and worked in the science labs at Princeton and Harvard Medical School. Upon meeting, Grace and Dwight moved out west and spent many years exploring the great outdoors. Throughout her life, Grace has enjoyed supporting the arts and regularly attends events for instrumental music, opera, theatre, visual arts, and dance. Grace continues to be fascinated by dancers’ skilled body movements inspired by a great variety of music.
The Grace and Dwight Harris Dance Scholarship will enable deserving CSU students to hone skills to be shared with others through a lifetime of performing, teaching, demonstrating, and inspiring others.