Clatsop Community College
For Immediate Release: April 26, 2006
Contact: Dr. Julie Brown, 338-2471; jbrown@clatsopcc.edu
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Clatsop Community College Student Receives One of the Nation’s Largest Scholarships

In a surprise ceremony today, CCC student Jan Nerenberg learned that she has been selected as a Jack Kent Cooke Scholar and will receive a $90,000 scholarship to complete her bachelor’s degree at the university of her choice.

“ I can’t believe it!” exclaimed Nerenberg. “I owe it all to Clatsop Community College and especially Julie Brown, my advisor, and my husband Bill, who have encouraged me all along. And I’m grateful to my Father in Heaven for this opportunity. Everyone here at Clatsop has been so supportive. It’s like home to me and I hope to come back someday to teach here.”

Nerenberg is one of 38 students selected from community or two-year colleges nationwide to receive the Jack Kent Cooke Undergraduate Transfer Scholarship, one of the largest and most competitive scholarships available to undergraduates in America.
Awarded by the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, the scholarship awards represent one aspect of the foundation’s efforts to increase access and reduce financial barriers for the nation’s best two-year college students to complete their four-year degrees. Selection criteria included academic excellence, financial need, will to succeed, leadership ability, service to others, and interest in or appreciation for the arts.

“Jan clearly meets all the criteria for this award,” says Dr. Julie Brown, CCC English Instructor and faculty representative for the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation. “The application she submitted was impressive in every respect, but a delightful highlight of her portfolio was her children’s discovery journal.”

Nerenberg’s research on a 300-year-old spruce tree that is an Astoria icon began as a biology class project, but the story she wove proved so compelling, bringing in math and geometry as well as plants and indigenous people, that teachers wanted to use it in their classes. It became a 65-page discovery journal for children from 6 to 12. Nerenberg wants to follow in the footsteps of J.R. Rowling, who helped get children back to reading, to give them “a greater appreciation of the world around them.”

College was a long time coming for Nerenberg. Her father nixed the idea when she was 14. “He was not interested in paying for a college education that would only be wasted when I married,” recalls Nerenberg. She worked as a secretary, married in 1969 and reared eight children. Most, including the girls, have advanced degrees. Losing her job due to an injury in 2004 proved the catalyst to go to college – finally.

Once enrolled at CCC, her instructors encouraged her, telling her she had real talent, both in art and writing. She is exhilarated to delve into literature, art, history and science, to get the base she needs “to be able to write as I have always wanted to write.”

The Undergraduate Transfer scholarship will provide Nerenberg with that opportunity. “We hope these scholarships will allow the students the opportunity to fulfill their educational goals and become the individuals they aspire to be,” says Matthew J. Quinn, the Foundation’s executive director.

Nerenberg and her fellow scholars were selected by the Foundation with assistance from a national panel of experts and come from 17 states and eight foreign nations, including Belarus, Vietnam, Ecuador, Jamaica, Palestine, Bhutan, Romania and China.

To learn more about the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, log on to www.jackkentcookefoundation.org.
To learn more about scholarships and other financial aid available at Clatsop Community College, call 338-2322 or log on to www.clatsopcc.edu.

PHOTO IMAGE: Jan Nerenberg (on left) with Dr. Julie Brown (center) and Dr. Greg Hamann (right).