Dilling Yang Funds Scholarships for Staff Career Development

The first Dilling Yang Staff Scholarships have been awarded to eight career staff to help them secure training through UCSB to aid in their professional development. Awards ranged up to $200 each, the maximum possible for an applicant, and the winners came from academic departments as well as administrative offices.

Initiated by Dilling Yang, wife and associate to Chancellor Henry Yang, the program allows for a fluctuating number of scholarships to be distributed to lower income staff each quarter of 2003-04. The winter quarter application deadline is Jan. 15; spring's deadline will be April 15. "We wanted to give maximum opportunity to staff," said Melinda Crawford, HR employment manager.

Applicants are required to adhere to the eligibility guidelines <http://hr.ucsb.edu/tod/pdf/YangScholarshipGuidelines.pdf> developed by Human Resources and Yang to ensure consideration of their scholarship requests, according to Crawford.

Only those nonprobationary career staff earning the full-time equivalent salary of $3,000 a month or less qualify to apply (including staff on the START program). The grants can be used in combination with the reduced fee enrollment benefit if the employee plans to take undergraduate or graduate courses.

The scholarships are also used to pay for HR training courses, such as for supervisor certificates or instructional computing; Extension classes; and even approved UCSB conferences.

"Staff career advancement is important to UCSB, and with budgets shrinking it is getting harder and harder to support training, so this is a welcome gift," said Crawford.