Germaine S. Dunn is the first recipient of the William E. Sanders Scholarship for Racial Minorities.

Dunn, daughter of Elwood and the Rev. Matilda Dunn of Chattanooga, is a graduate of Chattanooga School for the Arts and Sciences, a magnet school in the Hamilton County school system. She will be attending Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts this fall. Dunn says that she is “undecided” about what her major will be.

Dunn, a National Achievement Scholar, has been active in community outreach throughout high school. A partial list agencies at which she has done volunteer work includes; Ronald McDonald House, Camp Billy Johnson (2 yrs.), Chattanooga Cares Strides of March AIDs Walk (3 yrs.), and at University Soup Kitchen.

Dunn was selected to attend the Tennessee Governor’s School for the Humanities in the summer of 1997. The school is a special program of the Tennessee Department of Education that designed for gifted and talented students in the state. Study in the program, based at the University of Tennessee, Martin, is focused on various aspects of the humanities.

Dunn was one of 30 high school students selected from across the nation in the fall of 1997 to attend the Cityterm Program at the Masters School in New York. Cityterm is a semester long program based on the Masters School campus in Dobbs Ferry, NY (about 30 minutes from New York City). While attending the school she and the other students studied the tensions of the city; through assimilation vs. diversity, commerce vs. culture, and private vs. public issues.

When not involved in academic or community work, Dunn enjoys modern dance which she performs at Barking Legs Theatre in Chattanooga.

The scholarship fund was established in 1993 by the Diocese of East Tennessee in honor and recognition of the spiritual leadership of the Rt. Rev. William E. Sanders over the 30 years of his episcopate. Bishop Sanders served as Bishop of Tennessee before the state was divided into 3 dioceses. At that time he became first Bishop of the Diocese of East Tennessee.

The stated purpose of the fund is to provide tuition assistance to qualified students of identified racial minorities from the Episcopal churches of the Diocese of East Tennessee entering or engaged in higher education on the college or graduate level.
The corpus of the fund is to remain intact with disbursements coming from accrued interest. This year it was determined that the fund had accrued sufficient interest to start awarding scholarships. The amount of the scholarships will vary from year to year depending upon the amount of income that is created by the fund.

The scholarship is granted on a yearly basis. A recipient of the scholarship must request for renewal on an annual basis with appropriate documentation of continuing eligibility.

Application information for next year’s scholarship will be available later this fall.