Spring 2001

Volume 3 Number 2
A publication of Macon State College

Dr. Evelyn Toler Bickford Memorial Scholarship

By Renee Pearman

Dr. Evelyn Toler Bickford

Dr. Evelyn Toler Bickford was part of the Macon State College family for 32 years, teaching basic mathematics to thousands of students who passed through the divisions of Natural Sciences & Mathematics and Learning Support. Her husband, Alan Bickford, who joined the college faculty four years after Evelyn, still runs into her former students on the campus and around town.

"Every once in a while, I'm stopped in a grocery store or at a bookstore or on campus by former students who tell me they were in one of Evelyn's classes years before and how much she meant to them and how much they enjoyed her class," Bickford said. "Her students have always been so important to her, and, clearly, she was just as important to them."

Evelyn Bickford lost her three-year battle with cancer last September. Several weeks later Alan Bickford Ð with the support of family, friends and colleagues Ð approached Sue Chipman, director of the Macon State College Office of Development & Alumni Affairs, about establishing a scholarship in Evelyn's memory.

"This college and her students were a major part of Evelyn's life," Bickford said. "It seems to me that a scholarship in her memory is a very good way to acknowledge that fact."

Evelyn Toler, a Macon native and graduate of Martha Berry College, the University of Georgia and Georgia State University, was among the original faculty to welcome students to what was then Macon Junior College when it opened in 1968. Four years later she said hello to a new faculty member, Dr. Alan K. Bickford, a Massachusetts native straight out of graduate school who was hired to teach English.

"A friendship developed that fall of 1972, we were dating by the spring, and we married in 1975," said Bickford, a professor of English in the MSC Division of Humanities.

Establishing a Scholarship at MSC To establish a scholarship or to contribute to an existing scholarship, contact Sue. B. Chipman at 471-2732 or send an e-mail to schipman@mail.maconstate.edu. A contribution of $15,000 will establish a named-endowed scholarship, and a $1,500 donation will confirm a named scholarship awarded on a one-time basis. Contributions may be made to the General Scholarship Fund in any amount.

Evelyn Bickford was a member of the Natural Sciences & Mathematics faculty for five years before moving to the Division of Learning Support, where she was coordinator of mathematics. She also was an avid supporter of the Friends of the Macon-Bibb County Library.

To create a named-endowed scholarship at Macon State, contributions totaling at least $15,000 are needed, according to Chipman. That financial goal has been exceeded thanks to gifts from 64 donors, among them Macon State faculty, staff and students, members of the Bickford and Toler families, and friends and colleagues throughout the Southeast.

"Establishing a scholarship is a wonderful way to memorialize a person or family or pay tribute to someone while at the same time helping Macon State College students who show academic promise, but face financial obstacles, meet their education goals." Chipman said.

This fall the first Evelyn Toler Bickford Memorial Scholarship will be awarded to an adult student with financial need who has demonstrated a strong commitment to learning.