If you are a PATFA member and you have a dependent child in college, we encourage your student to apply for a stipend of up to $500 from the Harlan Baker Scholarship Fund.
The stipends are payable directly to the student’s college or university in the Winter/Spring term. One to three awards are made once a year. A student is eligible to apply or reapply for up to four academic years.
The next deadline for applications is Nov. 30. Each applicant must write an essay of 500 to 800 words that addresses a specific issue. The question for 2014: “How can organized labor protect workers’ rights more effectively?”
The student should send the essay to PATFA. It should be double-spaced, without the student’s name on each page.
A cover page should contain:
1) Student’s name.
2) Parent who is a PATFA member.
3) Contact for student: email, snail mail, and phone.
4) Contact for college where scholarship would go, including college name and name/email of the appropriate office that accepts tuition payments (bursar’s office, etc.). (Don’t make PATFA track down this information!)
Send hard copy of essay and cover sheet to PATFA, Room 311, Belfast Hall, UMA-Bangor, and 85 Texas Ave., Bangor ME 04401-4340.
Hint to PATFA members: The deadline is at the end of Thanksgiving weekend. Use that holiday period to encourage your busy student to finish the essay and get it to the mail.
PATFA has long offered these yearly small scholarships to the children of PATFA members. In 2014, the PATFA Executive Committee voted unanimously to name this scholarship in honor of a longtime University of Southern Maine adjunct professor of theater and tireless PATFA worker: Harlan Baker.
“Harlan’s life exemplifies his dedication to art, education, labor, and union activism. From high to low, he has fought for us in the state legislature, worked for adjuncts at contract bargaining tables, still makes local and regional labor meetings, and writes, acts in and directs drama infused with the history of labor. He can also belt out a sweet labor ballad. That’s why we feel he should no longer be an unsung treasure,” commented PATFA president Michele Cheung.