Posted December 21, 2016

 

CLEMSON, S.C. – The first recipient of newly established The Percy W. Woodruff Jr. Textile Manufacturing Scholarship has been announced.

 

The scholarship was created by Woodruff’s daughter, Dr. Chris Cole, Professor Emerita, MSE, at Clemson University, “both to honor my father and his career in the U.S. textile manufacturing industry and in recognition of the financial problems faced by many of our undergraduate students,” she said. “It is not unusual to find students simultaneously working multiple jobs and taking an internship and a full course load. It is also not unusual that these students are the first generation in their families to attend college.”

 

The first recipient of the scholarship was Roneisha “Ronnie” Blakeney, who indeed is the first in her family to attend college and struggled at first to declare an academic major. After transferring to Materials Science and Engineering at Clemson, she achieved not only high academic success but also in-depth mentoring of her fellow non-traditional students and involvement in the larger academic community.

 

Blakeney is now a Ph.D student in chemical engineering at Florida A&M University.

 

“She is excelling in her challenging program,” Dr. Cole said. “I look forward to her involvement in the textile industry in the future.”

 

This scholarship is designed to help non-traditional college students, “non-traditional” meaning those disadvantaged in some sense: perhaps by race or ethnicity or perhaps by getting started in college in the wrong major and experiencing a low initial GPR, which makes the student ineligible for traditional financial assistance.

 

There is no minimum GPR requirement for the recipient. The only restrictions are that the recipient is a non-traditional student, majoring in the polymeric fibers portion of Materials Science and Engineering at Clemson University, and demonstrating interest in fibrous materials.

 

Because the recipient is a non-traditional student, the award is given through the South Carolina Textile Education Foundation. The first award was for $2,500.

 

“I have issued a challenge to my departmental colleagues that I would match their contributions to a university scholarship fund for MSE undergraduate students of up to $5,000,” Dr. Cole said. “Let’s hope we can make this process grow!”

 

Percy Woodruff was a non-traditional university student. The oldest of five children of a father with a sixth grade education, he worked many jobs in high school in order to pay his way to N.C. State. These jobs included stage manager for a Raleigh theater, textile manufacturing and paper manufacturing.

 

Despite the large number of jobs, the only way he could afford to complete his college education was through the GI Bill as a WWII veteran and income from his wife’s teaching career. After graduating from college with a degree in textiles, he spent his career in the U.S. textile industry, retiring from Burlington Industries.