Announcing
The Norma F. Schuessler Scholarship
Department of Political Science
Arizona State University
The Department of Political Science at Arizona State University is pleased to announce the first annual competition for the Norma F. Schuessler Scholarship: a scholarship in the amount of $500 awarded each Spring to a student who is amassing an outstanding academic record in the face of challenges uncommon among political science undergraduates. Mrs. Norma Schuessler, after whom the scholarship is named, was a trailblazer in her time. A first-generation American born in Terre Haute, Indiana, in 1910, Mrs. Schuessler eagerly took on the academic challenges confronting women of her day. After graduating from Indiana State Teacher's College with a degree in physical education, she became a teacher and then a wife and mother, living on a farm where she learned to drive a tractor, plant gardens, and tend to the animals. With her husband, Hermann Schuessler, she raised three children while also devoting her considerable energies to her church, her community, and the education of her children. In keeping with her longstanding interest in and support for higher education, she encouraged her children, fostering values that would assure their academic success and that would be passed on to her grandchildren as well.
To this day, Mrs. Schuessler remains an advocate for higher education, maintaining a special interest in seeing young women meet today's challenges and succeed academically, much as she met the challenges of her times. Now, by way of this scholarship, Mrs. Schuessler wants to extend that example and support to students who, by virtue of the special challenges they take on, can be considered trailblazers in the same spirit.
The Schuessler scholarship is in general open to women and men who are majors in Political Science at Arizona State University, who have demonstrated financial need, and who have completed no less than 60 and no more than 105 credit hours toward the baccalaureate degree. Other eligibility requirements can be obtained upon picking up a copy of the application form.
The application form is available on the Department Web Site and at the Department of Political Science Department, Lattie F. Coor Hall, Room 6742. The deadline for the submission of applications is February 25, 2009.
Statement of Purpose
In composing your personal statement, you might want to consult the following statement of purpose, which briefly relates something of the spirit of the founder of the scholarship, Mrs. Norma F. Schuessler. You might want to stress how your undergraduate work is conducted in that spirit.
The Scholarship is named in honor of Norma Fredericka Schuessler, who was born Norma Fredericka Schwerdt on May 20, 1910 in Terre Haute, Indiana. A first-generation American, with family ties to Schnait, Wittenburg, Germany, Norma spoke only German until she was five years of age. Her life since exemplifies an eagerness to explore new horizons while also rising to academic challenges. Her life also exemplifies the spirit of the Scholarship bearing her name.
A graduate from Indiana State Teachers College with a degree in Physical Education and Home Economics, Norma participated in swimming and gymnastics at Indiana State and remains a proud member of the "I" letterwomen. After graduating from Indiana State, she taught physical education at the Sisters of St. Francis Convent until she married Herman Schuessler, an accountant. With this marriage, Norma, originally a city girl, converted to rural life, living on the family's farm and learning to drive a tractor, plant gardens, and tend to the farm animals. There Mr. and Mrs. Schuessler raised a family of three children: Ronald J. Schuessler, Martha Schuessler Thompson, and Ruth Schuessler Jones.
Always open to new adventures, Mrs. Schuessler eagerly accepted dares from her contemporaries and challenges from her mentors. Norma loves to travel, has a knack for gardening, and plans her Sunday afternoons so she can watch professional football, particularly the Indianapolis Colts. But overall, she has long devoted most of her energies to her family, her church, her community, and the education of her children. Indeed, she has long been an advocate for higher education, maintaining a special interest in seeing young women meet today's challenges and succeed academically, much as she met the challenges of her times. Thanks in considerable measure to her example and support, Norma Schuessler's three children and five grandchildren have all found academic success. Now, by way of this Scholarship, Mrs. Schuessler wants to extend that example and support still further.
Mrs. Schuessler's interest in creating this Scholarship in Political Science at Arizona State University stems from the career of her daughter, Dr. Ruth Jones, who joined the ASU Political Science faculty in 1981. In her twenty-year career at ASU, Dr. Jones has served as Chair of the Department, as "loaned executive to the Arizona Board of Regents, as Executive Assistant to ASU President Lattie F. Coor, and as Vice-Provost for Academic Programs. She has also provided an example in her own right, for her academic accomplishments and professional leadership occur in a profession in which women are much underrepresented. The Schuessler Scholarship is intended to encourage and support the work of students who are similarly underrepresented in the profession of political science.
The Norma F. Schuessler Scholarship will be awarded each Spring to an undergraduate student majoring in Political Science whose outstanding academic accomplishments, in the view of the Department, can be regarded as trailblazing. By the traditional measures, such a student will have demonstrated academic excellence and promise for sustained accomplishment. But the scholarship-winning student will be "nontraditional"- she or he will be pioneering new pathways, much as Mrs. Schuessler did - in the sense that she or he is amassing an outstanding academic record in the face of challenges uncommon among political science undergraduates.
For example, the scholarship recipient might be a "reentry student," that is, a student returning to a university education after some years raising a family or engaged in other nonacademic pursuits. Or the recipient might be pursuing distinctive and exceptionally demanding professional and training goals. Or, further, she or he might be working in the face of unusual obstacles occasioned by virtue of, say, disability, family hardship, race, gender, or cultural background.
In any of these ways and perhaps others, the Schuessler Scholarship recipient will be a student who takes up an exceptional challenge and helps expand the horizons of the possible in political science, not just for herself or himself, but for other students who can look to the example of her or his success. It is an important objective of the Schuessler Scholarship program to confer public recognition upon such trailblazing students and, in this way, to highlight the examples they are setting for the Department's undergraduate community.