SEQUIM — The Sequim Education Foundation will fund two additional scholarships beginning this year because of a $637,000 behest.

Jane Q. “Juana” Miller, a Sequim resident who died at the age of 91 in April 2014, left the bequest to the Sequim Education Foundation.

The foundation, which up until now has provided about 20 scholarships annually, will use the money as an endowment to generate scholarship money for Sequim graduates, said foundation President Jodi Olson.

‘Passionate’

Miller “was just always passionate about education and chose the Sequim Education Foundation to leave her legacy of inspiring kids to continue on with their education,” Olson said.

“We’ve set up [an] endowment in her name along with her friend Gertrude Greenside, who had actually passed away several years prior to Jane. Jane asked that the scholarship fund be set up in both of their names.”

Miller graduated from the Eastman School of Music, where she majored in music and minored in history.

She was active in the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Olympic Peninsula and enjoyed hosting Rotary International foreign exchange students.

The first two scholarships provided by the Miller Greenside Endowment Fund will be provided to the graduating class of 2015.

How to apply

To apply, students can pick up a form at the Sequim High School career councilor’s office.

For more information about the scholarship or about the Sequim Education Foundation, go online to www.sequimeducationfoundation.org.

The foundation has awarded more than $100,000 in scholarships since it began the program about eight years ago.

This endowment will establish two more scholarships per year at a minimum of $2,000 each.

The scholarships will be for technical or vocational training as well as four-year colleges and universities, and won’t be for a specific field of study.

“It is specified to give out to the kids to continue their education, not necessarily just college,” Olson said.

“It could be two-year colleges, technical schools — whatever it is that they want to pursue, any form of higher learning.”

If the students maintain good standing at their college or trade school, they will remain eligible to receive additional $2,000 scholarships each year thereafter.

Up to two new ones

The foundation will be able to provide two new scholarships a year indefinitely through the Miller endowment, Olson noted.

“We will maintain it in perpetuity,” she said.

It is important to provide the scholarships to local students because the cost of attending colleges, universities and trade schools has grown dramatically in the past several decades, Olson said.

“The cost of going on to higher learning has just skyrocketed, and so any opportunity we have to help kids with that endeavour is wonderful,” she said.

“We don’t want to see our students weighed down with debt as soon as they are getting started off.

“The more scholarships we have available to kids, the better off we are setting them up to go forward into the future.”

In addition to scholarships, the foundation also serves “kids in K through 12 to provide them with opportunities that inspire them to go off and pursue options beyond high school,” Olson said.

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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Chris McDaniel can be reached at 360-681-2390, ext. 5052, or cmcdaniel@peninsuladailynews.com.