The heavy metal band Metallica changed the lives of more than 50 students at Spokane Community College in 2019, and it is ready to help even more in the year ahead. SCC just learned Metallica’s Foundation All Within Our Hands is renewing its scholarship program to support students pursuing work in career and technical education fields.
SCC and nine other colleges across the country were the first to receive the Metallica Scholars programs in 2019 and SCC leadership was pleased to learn their successful partnership would continue.
“Our goal with the Metallica Scholars initiative was to fulfill the purpose of the grant through focusing on our returning adult population,” said Kevin Brockbank, SCC president. “In addition to the more than 50 students who were directly helped by the Metallica Scholars funds, we believe well over 100 additional students are now enrolled at SCC as a result of this project.”
The Metallica Scholars program at SCC will continue to focus on assisting Adult Basic Education students in transitioning to their first quarter of college-level credit classes in the career and professional technical programs, especially Information Technology, Allied Health and Manufacturing. The focus also will expand to support some of the student expenses in the new Running Start for Careers and Technical Education program for high school students.
Metallica granted the colleges $100,000 each last year and $50,000 this year. SCC is contributing $50,000 this year to make the project a $100,000 effort again. The scholarship assists with tuition, fees and books for the first quarter and may also assist with expenses such as childcare, tools and transportation.
In the first year, SCC Metallica Scholars were referred from the SCC GED, High School completion, ESL (English as a Second Language), Career Transitions and College Prep programs.
In a report to Metallica’s All Within My Hands Foundation many of the 2019 scholars wrote letters of thanks to the foundation and explained how the scholarships had helped to change their lives.
The Foundation selected the comments from one SCC scholar to use in its news release announcing the second year of the program:
“Thank you for seeing a need and being the agent through which real change is happening in my life. My children get to witness me make a life course change and see firsthand that out of adversity can come greatness and that being resilient is possible no matter what happens to us in life.” – Angelic Ewing
Nationally, the Metallica foundation reported supporting more than 700 scholars in the 10 schools last year, with an 80-90% completion rate and a 95% job placement for those who completed their programs.