Mary Ann Fund rewards Appalachian students at OHIO focused on environmental issues

Even at an early age growing up in Southeast Ohio, Cary Cooper was aware something wasn’t quite right with the creek running through his family’s farm.

“Raccoon Creek was one of the forever dirty creeks in Southeast Ohio along with a lot of other waters” in the region, he recalls. “I can remember as a kid looking at the water and it was pretty much green and there was nothing alive.”

Flash forward a few decades and it was those memories in part that inspired Cooper, a former member of the Ohio University Board of Trustees, to create a scholarship fund in his late wife’s name for students doing research around environmental issues.

Among its numerous initiatives involving a wide variety of partnerships, the George V. Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Service has focused for many years on the restoration of Raccoon Creek and other waterways in Appalachia. That work resulted in the creek being designated an Ohio Scenic River.

“That was one of the things I noticed that they did, which was work on the water quality in Southeast Ohio,” said Cooper, who also served on the Voinovich School Advisory Board. “That’s one of the projects I was very interested in and wanting to support. The water in the region including Raccoon Creek has been cleaned up substantially.”

Looking to help continue that work, Cooper and his family endowed the Mary Ann’s Fund For Voinovich Scholars, which recently issued its first two scholarships. Mary Ann Cooper, who along with Cary was an OHIO graduate (’64), died in 2016 after battling cancer.

The two award recipients – Shelby Davenport and Allie Flowers – are both Voinovich Undergraduate Research Scholars, one of several criteria for the scholarships. Awardees must also be students working on projects related to environmental sustainability and come from one of the 32 Ohio counties in the designated Appalachia Region.

Davenport is a junior in the OHIO's Honors Tutorial College majoring in environmental studies with a minor in outdoor recreation and education and a certificate in Appalachian Studies.

“I am honored to receive the Mary Ann Cooper Scholarship and to have the opportunity to work as a Voinovich Undergraduate Scholar on the Energy and Environment Team,” Davenport said.

“I am given real-life, practical experience working on issues that matter to me, such as making resources more accessible for communities in Central Appalachia to build flood resilience. I am very grateful to the scholarship donor for supporting my educational journey as I continue to learn from and give back to the communities that surround me,” Davenport said.

Flowers is in her third year studying mathematical statistics in the College of Arts and Sciences and is also pursuing minors in Spanish and business analytics. The Greenfield native, who is also a Cutler Scholar, said her interest in working in data analytics led her to becoming a part of the Energy and Environmental team. She is currently assisting with data analysis and other calculations.

“I am so grateful and honored to have received this award,” Flowers said. “Athens and Ohio University have such a strong community, and I feel that is further shown through the Mary Ann scholarship in its honoring of Mary Ann and support of students in Appalachia working on the environmental teams.”