NEWS

Morehead center is establishing science scholarship program for state schoolchildren

By KATIE BLIXT
UNC News Services

CHAPEL HILL -- The Morehead Planetarium and Science Center has established a science scholarship program whose goal will be to provide free admission to schoolchildren throughout the state.

Interviews with elementary school principals suggest that significant numbers of elementary schools, day cares and other child-care groups are not able to bring the children in their care to the Morehead Planetarium and Science Center due to financial constraints, and the center is trying to change that with the new scholarship program.

"Part of our role as a center is to demonstrate to children and the adults in their lives that the world of science holds many opportunities," said Dr. Holden Thorp, center director. "Many of our state’s citizens also seek to encourage children in this direction; together, we hope to make our center’s opportunities available to all of our state’s children."

Through the scholarship program, the center will use private donations to fund a scholarship for designated counties or school districts. The scholarship may be named for an individual or company.

Reef C. Ivey II of Raleigh has helped launch the program by making a donation in the name of his mother, Ethel R. Ivey. Ivey’s scholarship will go to schoolchildren in Lumberton, where Mrs. Ivey served as a teacher and principal for more than 45 years.

"My mother was proud of Lumberton," Ivey said. "I am doing this because I grew up in Robeson County and Lumberton and understand how difficult the economic system is there. I remember coming to the planetarium, and I know it does great things for schoolchildren."

Ivey, an attorney at Ward and Smith, PA, in Raleigh, received his law degree from the UNC School of Law.

The Morehead Planetarium and Science Center attracts more than 100,000 visitors annually, 80,000 of them children. The planetarium was the first to be located on a university campus.

To find out more about the scholarship program, contact Jennifer Lamb at (919) 843-3475 or jclamb@email.unc.edu.

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(Blixt is a junior journalism and mass communication major from Bermuda Run)

News Services contact: Deb Saine, (919) 962-8415