EUGENE, Ore. -- (July 2, 2010) - Bryan Boender was preparing for a career in financial management when he spent all of January 2001 training with Morgan Stanley Dean Witter at the firm's offices in the South Tower of New York's World Trade Center.
A little over seven months later, Al-Qaeda terrorists flew two hijacked airliners into the trade center's twin towers, killing 2,750 people. The attack drew the U.S. into its ongoing war on terrorism and helped change the direction of Boender's life.
"I knew a few people who were there that day," he says. "They all managed to get out safely."
But he calls the attack "a significant factor" in his subsequent decisions to leave the financial field, reevaluate his life, join the U.S. Army and serve 15 month as a paratrooper in Afghanistan.
He's back in college now, preparing to begin his second year at the University of Oregon School of Law. And an altered perspective is leading him in entirely new directions.
Boender is one of five UO students to receive scholarships for the 2010-11 academic year from the Pat Tillman Foundation, established in honor of the NFL player who left his athletic career to serve in the U.S. Army and was killed in Afghanistan.
Boender received a $4,000 scholarship. The five UO students were awarded a combined $30,000 in scholarships for the coming school year from the Pat Tillman Foundation.
The foundation awarded 60 scholarships totaling $720,000 in the U.S. after evaluating 1,500 applications from military veterans, active service members and their dependants.
In addition to Boender, the UO recipients include an undergraduate studying computer and information sciences and three graduate students in historic preservation, business and architecture, respectively.
The recipients are:
- Bryan Boender, Law
- Samuel Bennett, Computer and Information Sciences
- Kelly Christensen, Historic Preservation
- Justin Jangraw, General Business
- Caleb Lesselles, Architecture
The scholarships go beyond traditional study-related expenses such as tuition, fees and books. Applicants can request assistance for room and board and other basic needs, including child care, medical expenses or others that may be considered barriers to reaching academic goals set by military veterans and family members. Scholarship recipients must maintain academic standards and are expected to contribute a minimum of 15 hours of continued service in their local communities.
"There are not that many opportunities for scholarships," says Boender, who is working in Salem this summer as a law clerk for the Oregon School Boards Association. "And this seemed like a unique scholarship for someone like me."
The UO is one of eight universities that are partner universities of the Pat Tillman Military Scholars program. The partnership started when the Tillman Foundation saw The Telling Project - a veteran theatrical performance started by UO alumni - perform in Washington D.C. for Michelle Obama in November 2009.
About the University of Oregon
The University of Oregon is a world-class teaching and research institution and Oregon's flagship public university. The UO is a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU), an organization made up of the 63 leading public and private research institutions in the United States and Canada. The University of Oregon is one of only two AAU members in the Pacific Northwest.
Contact: Julie Brown, 541-346-3185, julbrown@uoregon.edu; or Joe Mosley, 541-346-3606, jmosley@uoregon.edu.
Source: Gretchen Jewett, UO Non-traditional student programs, 541-346-1123, gjewett@uoregon.edu