Scholarship Endowment

In 1994, Emrys Foundation extended its tradition of encouraging women and minorities in the arts by establishing an Emrys Scholarship Fund through the Community Foundation of Greater Greenville. In 1999, the first awards were presented from the scholarship in honor of Dr. Alice Conger Patterson, former director of Lifelong Learning at Furman University and a past Emrys president. Emrys is currently building an endowment for the Keller Cushing Freeman Fellowship, honoring the founder of the organization.

Descriptions of both the Scholarship and the Fellowship can be found below. Normally, Emrys does not award both a Scholarship and a Fellowship in the same year.

In 2010, applications will be accepted for two awards: Alice Conger Patterson Scholarship and A Room of One’s Own Residency. Guidelines for both awards appear below and can be used for application purposes. However, ALL completed applications must be submitted via US mail.

NOTE: The deadline to apply for both awards is April 18.

ALICE CONGER PATTERSON SCHOLARSHIP

The Alice Conger Patterson Scholarship is designed to encourage South Carolina women to pursue continuing education or to develop a creative endeavor in order to enhance a career in the arts or to change career direction. The Alice Conger Patterson Scholarship reflects the goals of the Emrys Foundation, whose mission is to promote excellence in the arts, especially literary, visual, and musical works by women and minorities.

Who may apply for a grant

• The Scholarship accepts applications from individual women only.
• Must be at least 35 years or older.
• Must be a resident of South Carolina and a citizen of the United States with a Social Security number.
• Must have demonstrated an interest in an existing career or a new career in the arts, which the scholarship would enhance.

Who may not apply

• A woman holding elective office or public office may not apply.
• A person may not apply on behalf of another.
• Groups, organizations, businesses, and 501(c) (3) tax exempt entities may not apply.
• Emrys Foundation current Board members and members of their families may not apply.

Grants range from $500 to $1000

• Be advised that the Internal Revenue Service considers grant funds to be taxable income.

Project limitations

• Tuition grants will be made directly to any accredited academic institution.
• Grants for creative endeavors will be made to the individual artist.

Writing the application

The application must be no more than 2 pages (8-1/2 x 11). Put your name, return address, and birth date on the front page, upper right hand corner. Applications must be typewritten.

Your application must include your objective, a description and the duration of the project/class, and the reason why it will enhance your objective.

Include a descriptive, item-by-item list of expenses and/or course information for the project.

Please submit:

• Your resume--5 copies;
• your application--5 copies;
• 2 letters of reference--1 copy of each letter.

WHEN TO APPLY

The Scholarship Committee of Emrys Foundation reviews applications annually. The application deadline is for 2010 is April 18.

We notify only the grant recipient. Make sure your envelope is properly postmarked by April 18, 2010, and all your information is correct.

Please mail your application to:
EMRYS FOUNDATION
Scholarship Committee
P.O. Box 8813
Greenville, SC 29604

A Room of One’s Own Residency

A Room of One’s Own Residency is designed to provide the opportunity for women from North and South Carolina to have a solitary week’s retreat at a cabin in Cedar Mountain, North Carolina, to devote time to their creative endeavors. A Room of One’s Own Residency reflects the goals of the Emrys Foundation, whose mission is to promote excellence in the arts, especially literary, visual, and musical works by women and minorities.

Who may apply for a grant

Who may not apply

Project limitations

Writing the application

The application must be no more than 2 pages (8-1/2 x 11). Put your name, return address, and birth date on the front page, upper right hand corner. Applications must be typewritten.

Your application must include your objective, a description of what you propose to devote your time to during the week’s residency, and the reason why it will enhance your objective.

Please submit:

WHEN TO APPLY

The Scholarship Committee of Emrys Foundation reviews applications annually. The application deadline for 2010 is April 18.

We notify only the grant recipient. Make sure your envelope is properly postmarked by April 18, 2010, and all your information is correct.

Please mail your application to:
EMRYS FOUNDATION
Scholarship Committee
P.O. Box 8813
Greenville, SC 29604

To request an information packet, send an SASE to The Emrys Foundation, Attention Scholarship Committee, PO Box 8813, Greenville, SC 29604.

KELLER CUSHING FREEMAN FELLOWSHIP

The Keller Cushing Freeman Fellowship, to be awarded by the Emrys Foundation, is designed to encourage North and South Carolina women to pursue post-graduate study in the arts. This fellowship reflects the goals of the Emrys Foundation, whose mission is to promote excellence in the arts.

Guidelines:

The Fellowship Committee accepts applications from individual women only. Applicants must be residents of either North or South Carolina, and must have a Social Security number. Applicants must be 25 years old or older and have completed at least an undergraduate degree from an accredited college or university. Applicants must have demonstrated a commitment to the arts that this fellowship would enhance.

Application Form:

The application must consist of no more than two typewritten pages (8-1/2 x 11) and display the applicant's name, address, phone number, and birth date on the front page, upper right hand corner. The application should include the institution and date of the undergraduate degree and a description of the proposed course, including its cost, duration, and institution offering the course. Five copies of this application and five copies of the applicant's resume, along with two letters of reference (one copy of each letter), should accompany the application.

When to Apply:

There will be no Freeman Fellowship for 2010.

Emrys Scholarship Winner for 2008

The 2008 Alice Patterson Scholarship winner was Kiya Heartwood of Moore, S.C. Kiya is a musician who has been part of a “folk and roll” duo called Wishing Chair for the last 15 years. The two have performed in Canada and throughout the United States. Before that, Kiya lived in the Cherokee capital of Tahlequah, Oklahoma, and was the lead singer and songwriter for a major-label rock band called Stealin’ Horses.

Currently, Kiya is studying music composition at Converse College, and her Patterson Scholarship was applied to her tuition. She recently completed an original operetta for children, Lying to the Sea Gypsy. This 40-minute work will debut in the Upstate this spring and has already been picked up by a troupe in Philadelphia. It will be performed there at the end of May.

On May 5, Kiya will perform at the 2009 Emrys annual meeting at Greenville’s Centre Stage. She will showcase a portion of her operetta and perform as part of Wishing Chair.

Emrys Scholarship Winners for 2007

The Alice Conger Patterson Scholarship ($1,000) was awarded to photographer, Polly Gaillard Donahue to assist toward tuition for a week-long course at the Maine Photographic Workshops in Rockport, Maine in July.  There Polly worked with Master photographer, Joyce Tenneson, one of the leading photographers of her generation.  The workshop will assist Polly to further refine her portrait photography skills, and she will incorporate her new knowledge into classes she teaches locally.  Polly holds a B.A. in Journalism from the University of South Carolina and teaches portrait photography classes at the WestEnd Darkroom and the Greenville County Museum of Art.  In her career, she has had a number of solo exhibitions throughout the United States, and she was included in the Emrys Photography Exhibit, Waking the World" in 2002.  Recently, Polly's images for A Child's Haven project were so successful that the agency will use her portraits to tell stories of Greenville's children in poverty.  

The Keller Cushing Freeman Fellowship ($975) was awarded to Sonia Rapaport of Newton, North Carolina, to assist in tuition fo  her last semester at the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program at Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky.  Sonia holds a B.A. in Anthropology and Religious Studies from the University of Virginia, a Master of Arts in Anthropology from American University, and a Doctor of Medicine from the University of Virginia.  A single mother of four children, two with special medical needs, Sonia is able to work as a family physician only one day a week.  She writes both poetry and prose.  

Emrys Scholarship Winner for 2006

This year, the Emrys Foundation awarded the Alice Conger Patterson scholarship to Terri McCord, a poet from Greenville, SC., which will assist her in funding a four-week writing residency (May 14-June9) at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont. While having an opportunity to work with poets Bob Hicok and Laurie Scheck, Ms. McCord will also have time to finish her book-length poetry manuscript entitled The Rose Spot.

Ms. McCord is a graduate of Furman University and holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Queens University in Charlotte, N.C. Her poems have been included in anthologies published by Ninety-Six Press and Hub City Press as well as numerous other publications across the country. She teaches English at Greenville Technical College and has also been an instructor and guest artist at the South Carolina Governor's School for the Arts and Humanities and the Fine Arts Center. We have had the pleasure of hearing Ms. McCord read her poems at two prior Emrys Reading Room series events

Emrys Scholarship Winners for 2005

One award was given to Gail Crawford, a Mental Health Clinical Nurse Specialist who now is Palliative Care Coordinator at the Greenville Hospital System. She has published articles in professional nursing journals and in 2003 was honored as a recipient of the Palmetto Gold, an award that identifies the finest nurses in the state. Gail will use her money to work with a professional writer at a writers' workshop. She wants to complete stories about caring for her father and hopes to use those writings in workshops with nurses, workshops that focus on the value of journaling as a way of coping with stressful life events.

The other award went to Angela Cravens, a graduate of Wade Hampton High School and the Fine Arts Center and of SCAD. Angela is an active woodworker interested in increasing her visibilty and in buying equipment that will make "the difference between 'craft' work without the fine details and 'fine art' with the fine details. She will use the scholarship money to, as she said, "completely change my career (or way of earning income) to more naturally suit the creative artist that I have always been."

Emrys Scholarship Winners for 2004

The two women chosen by the Scholarship Committee (consisting of Angela Ford, Jo Ann Walker and Nancy Taylor) to receive Alice Conger Patterson Scholarships are Nancy Harris and Cynthia Nedved. The Patterson scholarships are named in honor of an early president of the Emrys Foundation, and this year each winner received a $500 award.

Nancy Harris of Greenville is a photographer and an MFA candidate at Rockport College in Maine. Nancy is working on a series of photographs that will portray illusory thoughts of a segment in time of a Southern woman's life. The photographs will be accompanied by a written narrative, part of which is an invented/remembered history concerning Southern women. Nancy says that through a gothic presentation of Southern archetypal women, landscapes, and architecture, her own grief and loss have surfaced; she hopes her work will be a means of sharing what she learns in this process. Nancy will use her scholarship partially to fund the work needed to complete the MFA.

Cynthia Nedved, is also a Greenville resident who has returned as an adult student to Furman to finish the education she postponed to support her husband and herself and then to raise children. Now Cindy is a visual arts major and next year will be a senior at Furman, with all A's (so far). She'll use her scholarship to help pay for some of the art supplies she'll need for her final year.