The Wyoming State Senate passed two bills on Friday expanding the Hathaway scholarships providing financial aid for summer and winter break courses and increasing the award amount of each scholarship by 5 percent.
The Joint Education Committee proposed the bill expanding financial assistance for summer and winter break courses and it passed the Senate unanimously and is regarded as a “student friendly bill” by committee member Sen. Bill Landen, R-Casper.
“Before, students could not utilize those Hathaway funds during those interim terms and I am really pleased with this bill, I think it fixes things and it really helps our students,” said Landon.
When clarifying how the additional summer session impacts the scholarship amount, Landon added, “It counts against the total amount of money you can receive but it doesn’t chip into those eight total semesters you are eligible to use your Hathaway for.”
Students are eligible to have their Hathaway scholarship provide up to six credit hours during a summer or winter session.
The new Hathaway scholarship does not cover all costs of summer or winter courses but does provide an amount proportional to what a student receives during his or her fall or spring semester.
The second Senate bill was also presented by the Joint Education Committee and originally called for a 10 percent increase for all Hathaway scholarships. However, the bill passed the Senate only increasing the award amounts by five percent.
“Many senators wanted to be very careful with the Hathaway funds, and I respect that because we all want that fund to be there from now on,” Landen said.
Following a series of public forums addressing the rising cost of tuition at UW, the increase in Hathaway funds may be interpreted as a direct response. Sen.
Jim Anderson, also a member of the Joint Education Committee, confirmed that this has been a hot topic for a while now in the Wyoming State Legislature.
“This is an ongoing discussion and actually the changes we made to the Hathaway scholarship this time was the fact that we had some additional money in the fund that we felt deserved a discussion for raising the rates of the Hathaway scholarship,” Anderson said.
Anderson also said that the discussion didn’t entirely ignore rising tuition rates,
“It really was not necessarily in response to the tuition rates, although we do try to keep up with that so that we can help students meet that need,” he said.
The Wyoming House of Representatives still must pass both of the Senate bills in order for them to end up on Gov. Matt Mead’s desk to be signed into law.
