The North Ful­ton Branch of the Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion of Uni­ver­sity Women (AAUW) has just awarded $2,500 schol­ar­ships to two local women pur­su­ing their advanced degrees at area colleges.

• Aprana Ral­la­bandi is pur­su­ing her MBA at Rein­hardt College’s McCamish School of Busi­ness, Alpharetta cam­pus. She received her Mas­ter of Sci­ences in Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions from the Illi­nois Insti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy. A part time stu­dent with a full time job and fam­ily, she plans to use the AAUW funds to help pay for tuition and books. Ms. Ral­la­bandi said, “I know and will always remem­ber that when I needed some finan­cial assis­tance and asked for it, I was heard and helped and when­ever and how­ever I can, I need to give back so that this cycle goes on and the world is seen as a bet­ter place to live by more and more peo­ple. I see MBA edu­ca­tion as another step in my pur­suit for knowl­edge and con­tin­u­ous learning.”
• Olga Pet­rice­vic is a Ph.D. can­di­date in Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion at Geor­gia State University’s J. Mack Robin­son Col­lege of Busi­ness. In a Joint Degree Pro­gram, she received both her Mas­ters of Inter­na­tional Busi­ness from Robin­son Col­lege and her Bach­e­lor of Arts in Ger­man (Summa Cum Laude) from GSU’s Col­lege of Arts and Sci­ences. She has now entered into the final dis­ser­ta­tion stage of her Doc­tor­ate pro­gram and is work­ing on build­ing a com­pre­hen­sive data set to test hypothe­ses devel­oped in her dis­ser­ta­tion. Ms. Pet­rice­vic said, “The AAUW schol­ar­ship will enable me to advance much faster in my research by pro­vid­ing the nec­es­sary fund­ing for col­lect­ing and build­ing a unique data set. I am so grate­ful and so hon­ored to be part of the AAUW com­mu­nity and I am com­mit­ted to actively con­tinue AAUW’s mis­sion of break­ing bar­ri­ers for women and girls, espe­cially in higher education.”

In May 2010, the North Ful­ton Branch of AAUW awarded $2,500 schol­ar­ships to two women pur­su­ing their Mas­ters Degrees at area col­leges. AAUW is proud to announce that one year later, both recip­i­ents have received their Master’s Degrees.

Schnell Man­son, a recent grad­u­ate of Geor­gia State University’s Robin­son Col­lege of Busi­ness, received the AAUW – North Ful­ton Branch aca­d­e­mic schol­ar­ship two years in a row. Accord­ing to Ms. Man­son “the awards have been a tremen­dous asset in help­ing to pay for my MBA grad­u­ate degree. Receiv­ing these schol­ar­ships has made the ris­ing cost of tuition and stu­dent fees less tax­ing”. Schnell grad­u­ated in May with a Master’s in Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion (MBA) with a 3.78 GPA. She is pur­su­ing a career as a Senior Finan­cial Ana­lyst with a com­pany in the North Ful­ton area. She plans to con­tinue to work with AAUW. “I have really enjoyed being part of AAUW and I look for­ward to help­ing the North Ful­ton Branch recruit other schol­ar­ship recip­i­ents” said Ms. Manson.

Klaretta Young was also a North Ful­ton Branch schol­ar­ship win­ner for this past aca­d­e­mic year. She recently received her Mas­ters of Arts in Teach­ing (MAT) from Rein­hardt University’s Price School of Edu­ca­tion with a 3.95 GPA and is actively pur­su­ing a teach­ing posi­tion. Ms. Young is an active mem­ber of the North Ful­ton branch and was recently selected by the branch to receive a $500 schol­ar­ship to attend AAUW’s National Con­fer­ence for Col­lege Women Stu­dent Lead­ers (NCCWSL).

Ms. Young com­mented that “It was an honor to have been cho­sen from among so many intel­li­gent and deserv­ing young women to receive the AAUW schol­ar­ship. The finan­cial assis­tance allowed me to focus on my aca­d­e­mic achieve­ment and less on the finan­cial details of attend­ing school. I will be for­ever grate­ful to AAUW. To show my con­tin­ued appre­ci­a­tion and to help pave the way for future recip­i­ents, I will con­tinue to do my part by being actively involved in AAUW, North Ful­ton Branch.”

All monies for these annual schol­ar­ships were secured by Branch mem­bers through their vol­un­teer work before and dur­ing AAUW’s Annual Book Fair. This year 75,000 gen­tly used books will be avail­able at bar­gain rates from Octo­ber 4 – 9, 2011 at Perime­ter Mall.

Visit the local branch web­site at http://aauwnorthfultonga.wordpress.com/ for addi­tional schol­ar­ship infor­ma­tion and http://bookfairaauw.org/ for addi­tional Book Fair information.

Pat DeWitt, AAUW Geor­gia Past Pres­i­dent, and cur­rent Pub­lic Pol­icy chair is a pub­lished news­pa­per colum­nist writ­ing on AAUW related top­ics. She started writ­ing edi­to­ri­als in 2006, long before the AAUW Voices Project, which she does par­tic­i­pate in. Twelve of her arti­cles are on the Rome News Tri­bune site includ­ing her lat­est article, on Women’s Equal­ity Day.

The AAUW Voices Project is a country-wide com­mu­nity of media first-responders, armed with train­ing, resources, and sup­port and ready to pen op-eds, let­ters to the edi­tor, blog posts, and more. The goal is to have AAUW voices pub­lished through­out the nation to edu­cate the pub­lic, spark dis­cus­sion, and influ­ence the debate.

DeWitt reports that no one in GA accepted her Equal Pay Day edi­to­r­ial this year except the Rome News-Tribune. In the next Voices Project phase, writ­ers have been asked to write about social secu­rity. She will do that on the Voices Project time­line and see what hap­pens. She also likes to pur­sue top­ics that are not leg­isla­tive as you can tell by the top­ics she has writ­ten about.

She sug­gests “that prob­a­bly any home­town paper would be more likely to pub­lish an op-ed from some­one local. There­fore we could use some more op-ed writ­ers here in Geor­gia.” She is will­ing to pro­vide a train­ing ses­sion at a state meet­ing so there are more op-ed writ­ers on AAUW topics.