News
Family establishes music education residency scholarship for Tech seniors
Inspired by their daughter’s experience at Tennessee Tech University, Barbara and
Jessie Brooks, along with daughter Shelby, have established the Brooks Family Music
Education Residency Scholarship which will provide tuition assistance to senior music
education students at Tech as they begin their student teaching.
“When we see a need, we try to help,” Barbara said.
In addition to Barbara, `83 accounting, and Shelby, `20 music education, numerous members of the Brooks family are Tech alumni as well including Barbara’s brother, sister, brother-in-law, two nephews and two nieces.
“My older brother went to Tech, and it created this legacy of so many members of our family coming to Tech,” Barbara explained.
When Shelby became the most recent Brooks family member to choose Tech, Barbara and Jessie traveled from their home in Kingston to Cookeville as often as possible to attend football games, music recitals and other events on campus. And they remember the excitement they felt the first time they saw Shelby play in the marching band.
“The first time she marched, I thought, ‘This is real – she’s actually in a university marching band!’” Barbara said.
Jessie says he didn’t realize how hard music majors work until he saw it through Shelby’s eyes, and it’s one of the reasons he wanted to establish a scholarship at Tech.
“We want to ease the burden of not only music students, but their parents as well,” he said. “We have been blessed with steady jobs, but that’s not always the case with some students and their parents. Some of Shelby’s friends struggled financially.”
Barbara and Jessie told Shelby she could decide the criteria for the scholarship, and after careful consideration, Shelby decided she wanted to designate the scholarship for senior music education students beginning their residency. She explains that the hardest part about being a music education major is the residency requirement, or what is commonly referred to as student teaching.
“When you are student teaching five days a week, eight hours a day, that becomes a full-time job, but you aren’t paid because it’s a requirement for your major,” Shelby said. “To hold down a job while doing residency is hard to manage. You also have to work on your teacher licensure. So many requirements are happening at the same time. That’s why we designated the scholarship for a student doing residency – to ease that financial burden a little.”
Barbara says she didn’t receive scholarships when she attended Tech, and she had to go home every weekend to work a minimum wage job to pay for tuition and other expenses. But she wanted something better for Shelby.
“I wanted Shelby to have the full college experience and enjoy all that was available to her,” Barbara said.
While Shelby received scholarships from Tech, Jessie and Barbara acknowledge that not every student is as fortunate.
“There are a lot of kids who want to play in a college band and can’t, because even with scholarships, college is still a lot of money,” Jessie said. “Not every kid is going to be the star athlete or have the highest GPA, and I am really happy to give back because there’s a child out there who isn’t going to get a scholarship, and I hope he or she receives ours.”
Colin J. Hill, Director of the School of Music at Tech, expressed the university’s gratitude for the Brooks family’s generosity, explaining, “Shelby was an outstanding student in my percussion instrument class and was a joy to teach. She always had an extremely kind demeanor, which I now know was instilled through her family's values.”
Hill added, “This endowment will be an incredible opportunity for future music education students. Residency II is all-consuming. With full-time teaching obligations and daily assignments regarding lesson plans and preparation, it is extremely difficult for these students to work a part-time job. For this reason, this generous endowment will provide deserving students the opportunity to focus solely on their future career as a music educator.”
