The University of Dallas English Department Dona S. Gower Memorial Endowed Scholarship
is made possible by a generous donation from the Athena Foundation, which Dr. Gower
founded.
Dona (Spawn) Gower, who graduated from UD with an English Major in 1964, went on to receive a Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University. She was a passionate and inspiring teacher of literature at the college and high school levels, and in the last three decades of her life worked with non-profit foundations in Dallas dedicated to educating teachers. She created the Athena Foundation solely with this mission--to allow the renewal and enlargement of purpose for teachers through a communal experience of classic texts of literature.
Here is an essay Dr. Gower wrote and presented to the Athena Foundation.
The education Dr. Gower received at the University of Dallas was the foundation for her love of classic literature and the basis for her passionate belief in the power of literature to transform the lives of those who study it. Rising senior English majors may submit an application for the scholarship, including a brief essay reflecting on the importance of the role of the teacher.
For more information regarding the endowment application please contact the English Department.
Support the Dr. Dona S. Gower Memorial Endowed Scholarship
Gower Scholarship Recipients
2015-16 Ann (Kuehl) Artz
2016-17 Mary Shannon McFall
2017-18 Anne Elfelt
2019-20 Adrianna Schell
2020-21 Ann Urbanski
Chair and Associate Professor of English Debra Romanick Baldwin, Ph.D., and Professor of Physics and recent Interim Dean of Constantin College Sally Hicks, Ph.D., have secured a $299,078 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support writing instruction at UD for the fall 2020 semester.
+ Read MoreHis first step was to enroll in physician’s assistant school at Baylor’s College of Medicine, a career trajectory to which he had aspired since his early childhood. Nowadays, Jonathan Cunningham, BA ’17, is dedicated to the vocational pursuit of comfort and healing at MD Anderson in Houston, among the largest cancer treatment centers in the U.S., where he was once a chemotherapy patient himself.
+ Read MoreDuring his Rome semester in 1991, Joseph Meaney, BA '93, with his friends (now Father) Kevin Cook, BA '94, and (now Texas State Representative and UD Trustee) Tan Parker, BA '93, attended a private Mass with Pope St. John Paul II. Several weeks earlier, they had hand-delivered a letter to the Swiss Guards outside St. Peter's requesting the Mass and including their contact information; at last, they'd received the phone call instructing them to be at the Bronze Gates at 5 a.m.
+ Read More
