2024 ASPE Annual Conference Scholarship Inaugural Recipients
By: Amber Snyder, Vice President for Finance
Each year, we get requests for scholarships to attend ASPE and we didn’t have a funding source for these opportunities. At the ASPE conference in Portland in 2023, we stretched our imaginations on how we could bring more member benefits and launched the ASPE Fund. The goal of the ASPE fund was to provide an income stream for grassroot donations to build a fund to allow us to continue to bring existing membership benefits to you all, but also expand our international reach, our SP community, and Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion efforts.
In this inaugural year, we were so excited to offer two scholarships to ASPE members which included free registration and a $1,000 travel stipend. We divided our applicant pool into two groups, members who have been with the organization for more than 5 years and members who have been with the organization for 5 years or less. We received over 30 applications for these scholarships this year.
To support a fair review process, all applications were blinded from identifying information and distributed to a pool of reviewers which included current and prior board members with no known association with any applicants. The reviewers were provided a rubric to review the applications, looking at the level of detail in responses, financial need, and detailed plans for attending ASPE and applying best practice to their work. The committees then met to finalize their selections.
Our recipient for the less than 5-year members is Janet Lo, Standardized Patient Program Director and SP Educator, of Boise State University, Simulation Center, School of Nursing. Congratulations Janet!
Our recipient for the more than 5-year award is Erin Walsh, Standardized Patient Educator, Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science. Congratulations Erin!
Over the next few months, you will get the opportunity to learn more about our recipients. We cannot thank you enough for all your contributions to the ASPE fund over the last 9 months and we hope to continue to grow this fund and offer more robust scholarships and other opportunities in years to come!
Communication and Connections Committee Mission: “To bring high quality reporting of current research, trends, techniques and information regarding SP methodology and other relevant industry articles to the attention of the membership through the web-based ASPE eNews blog.”
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