By DENISE ELAM
Reporter

(WARRENSBURG, Mo., digitalBURG) — The University of Central Missouri announced the creation of a third Cesar Chavez Scholarship to be made available to graduating seniors at Alta Vista Charter High School in Kansas City, Missouri.

The scholarship is worth $3,125 per year and is renewable for up to eight semesters for a total of $12,500. To be eligible for consideration, students must attend Alta Vista Charter High School in Kansas City, Missouri, be of Hispanic or Latino descent, show financial need and be accepted to UCM. Two other Cesar Chavez Scholarships are also available to students who live within the Kansas City metropolitan area.

The Cesar Chavez Scholarship, which was founded in 2003 under former UCM President Bobby Patton, seeks to help students of Hispanic or Latino descent attain a higher education while honoring the legacy of Civil Rights Activist Cesar E. Chavez.

Monica Huffman, who serves as the executive assistant to the president of UCM, said the scholarship has grown over the years. It started with one scholarship worth $10,000 under former President Bobby Patton and grew to two scholarships under the direction of former President Aaron Podolefsky. Current President Chuck Ambrose, like his predecessors, has worked to further the scholarship and its outreach.

“This year Dr. Ambrose established a third Cesar Chavez Scholarship that is designated specifically for a student at Alta Vista,” Huffman said. President Ambrose also increased the amount of the scholarship from $10,000 to $12,500.

Alta Vista Charter High School is a UCM sponsored charter school that focuses on dropout recovery and prevention for high-risk Hispanic and inner city youth, according to UCM’s website.

Joe Arce, publisher of the Kansas City Hispanic News and chair of the Cesar E. Chavez Scholarship Committee, approached Patton in 2003 to discuss a potential partnership between the university and the Hispanic community in Kansas City.

“I suggested at the time that I met with Dr. Bobby Patton that it would be nice if we could engage the students in the area by offering a scholarship in honor of Cesar Chavez,” Arce said. “He liked the idea and so we moved forward with more discussions about how we were going to create this.”

Arce said the goal of the scholarship is to encourage students to seek a higher education and to give them support in order to attain it.

“We want them to know that we support them in honor of Cesar Chavez and his legacy and this is why we ask that once they complete their degrees and work toward a successful career and life that they come back to our community and open those doors for someone else,” Arce said. “It puts them in a position to do that, I believe, by offering them a Cesar Chavez Scholarship.”

The scholarship also helps keep the legacy of Cesar Chavez alive.

“So often the youngest right now that are going to school they really don’t have a really good understanding of the work and legacy of Cesar Chavez,” Arce said. “It keeps that dialogue going. They start talking about Cesar Chavez and if they don’t know about him then they are curious about that. Who is this man and what does he stand for? And all of a sudden they see we have an American hero that happens to be of Mexican descent.”

The first Cesar Chavez Scholarship was awarded on April 24, 2004. Twenty students have since been awarded the scholarship. Natalia Hernandez, a freshman biochemistry major at UCM, was a 2015 recipient of the scholarship. Hernandez said the scholarship is a great opportunity for students at Alta Vista High School.

“Many of us at Alta Vista are first generation, so seeing that other people believe in us and are helping us with this opportunity just pushes us to do more and do better,” Hernandez said. “It’s just a really great opportunity to help us move forward.”

The scholarship application is available on UCM’s website. Once submitted, applications are reviewed by members of the Cesar E. Chavez Scholarship Committee in Kansas City as well as representatives from the university.

“The committee makes their selection and we then move them forward to the president, who approves them,” Huffman said.

Arce said the judging criteria are similar to that of other scholarship committees. The committee looks at the financial need of the applicants, the size of their family, their community involvement efforts, and their GPA. The committee is also interested in seeing whether or not the applicants are first generation college students.

“We also look at the fact that maybe there may be someone that grew up similar to Cesar Chavez that might have come from a migrant family or volunteered somehow and some way in their community or maybe work in civil rights issues,” Arce said.

Once approved by the president, the recipients are presented with their scholarships during the Cesar E. Chavez Day celebration at the Guadalupe Centers in Kansas City.

“As part of that celebration we go to Kansas City,” Huffman said. “Dr. Abrose goes and other staff members go and the recipients are there and it’s an opportunity to make a public announcement of who those recipients are.”

The deadline to apply for the Cesar Chavez Scholarship is March 1, 2016. For more information on eligibility requirements, visit ucmo.edu/chavez.