The Northwestern State University of Louisiana Mimi Jordan Arts and Music Scholarship returns for the Spring 2024 semester after a year of unavailability. The deadline for students eligible to apply is this Friday, March 22 at noon.
The Mimi Jordan Arts and Music Scholarship was founded by Ed Jordan, husband of Mimi Jordan, recording back to 2000 with a purpose to support students in the Dear School of Creative and Performing Arts. Her family has continued to support the scholarship as an everlasting memorial of Mimi Jordan.
Funding for the Mimi Jordan Arts and Music scholarship is kept within the NSU Alumni Foundation through an endowment from the Jordan family.
The scholarship is typically offered on a calendar year basis as award amounts are determined based on the state of the stock market and interest generated from the endowment. However, the scholarship was unavailable in the 2023 calendar year as no funds were available due to the stock market crash.
Tiffany Chasteen, associate director of advancement and scholarship coordinator for the NSU Alumni Foundation, explained that the Mimi Jordan Scholarship operates much differently compared to other Foundation scholarships.
“The Mimi Jordan Scholarship is unique in nature in that students wouldn’t complete the NSU Foundation Scholarship application, they would complete a separate application that is managed through the Office of Creative and Performing Arts,” Chasteen said.
The application is distributed by CAPA Offices to sophomore, junior or senior students majoring in creative or performing arts. Applicants then complete a short answer questionnaire describing their goals within their chosen field.
Once the application has been submitted back to the CAPA Office, the submissions are sent to the Jordan family for selection.
“The scholarship is for students majoring in either music or art and they have to be an upper level student and they have preference to a student that shows creativity, integrity and love of beauty,” Chasteen said.
Scott Burrell, department head of CAPA, elaborated on student eligibility for the Mimi Jordan Arts and Music Scholarship.
“We’ve had students from musical theatre as well because they’re musicians, they sing, so we’ve had recipients who have won in theatre in the past,” Burrell said. “If you feel like you’re applicable, whether you’re in theatre, art, music, I will send it to them and let them decide.”
Jessica Zhang, head of the Department of New Media, Journalism and Communication Arts, addresses that students in her department are eligible as well since NMJC is one of the four departments under CAPA.
“Communication definitely falls under the CAPA umbrella,” Zhang said. “As one of the majors that fall under the CAPA umbrella, communication students can also apply for the scholarship and be evaluated the same way as other applicants.”
Students majoring in communication submit applications to Burrell in the same process as students majoring in art or music.
The most previous selection process, the 2022 calendar year, consisted of 16 students applicants. This time around, Burell hopes for more applicants in 2024.
“Usually it’s about five students, this time around it’s probably going to be a selection of five $1000 dollar scholarships,” Burell said. “I hope that we have a lot of applicants to make it a hard choice for the family.”
Once the Jordan family has made their selections, Chasteen awards the selected students with their scholarship from the Jordan family endowment.
“The money’s here at the foundation, we invest our endowed scholarships and we award based on the interest earned,” Chasteen said. “They just send it to me, who to award and how much, and I do that so it is very unique in nature compared to the other scholarships we have here.”
Burrell encourages all eligible students to utilize opportunities provided by the Jordan family.
“Take advantage of it, I mean it’s just money sitting there to be awarded by a great family who’s dedicated to CAPA and want to give back,” Burrell said.
