| March 9, 2010 COPY BY: Rana McDonald, 806-651-2129, rmcdonald@wtamu.edu WTAMU Student Awarded Mayborn Scholarship CANYON, Texas—West Texas A&M University student Katelyn Garrity has been named the recipient of a Frank W. Mayborn Scholarship award in the amount of $3,000. The Mayborn scholarship is part of the Frank W. Mayborn Award for Community Leadership which was established in 1992 in memory of the late Frank Mayborn, publisher of the Temple Daily Telegram. The Frank W. Mayborn Award for Community Leadership is awarded annually to a publisher or newspaper executive, and the 2009 recipient is Les Simpson, publisher of the Amarillo Globe-News. Each year, the recipient of the award chooses a Texas college or university to receive the $3,000 scholarship award, and West Texas A&M University was Simpson’s choice. WTAMU communication faculty members met and unanimously selected Garrity as the scholarship recipient. She learned she had been awarded the scholarship from Dr. Trudy Hanson, head of the Department of Communication, and immediately shared the news with her mother. “Katelyn Garrity’s determination to make a difference by her involvement with news media is one of the reasons she was selected for the Mayborn Scholarship,” Hanson said. “I was familiar with her work as editor of the Randall High newspaper but even more impressed by her passion for writing as a student at WTAMU. She took part in a Skype conference the faculty search committee had with a candidate for a faculty position, and Katelyn’s questions to the candidate were some of the most thoughtful and thought provoking asked during the conversation. She has a passion for journalism that is revealed in all of her mass communication course work.” One stipulation of the scholarship is that the recipient be classified as a senior, but WTAMU officials were given special permission by the Texas Daily Newspaper Association to grant the award to Garrity even though she is classified as a sophomore. “I was thrilled to find out I had been chosen,” Garrity said. “It’s really an honor, especially since the award is supposed to go to a senior.” She is a sophomore mass communication/print media and political science double major from Amarillo. She graduated from Randall High School, where she served as editor of the school newspaper, and she currently volunteers on the WTAMU paper, The Prairie. Garrity maintains a 4.0 GPA and is a member of the Attebury Honors Program. She one day hopes to be a political correspondent. —WTAMU— | 