Staff Reports
Indiana University has established a new scholarship with the help of a Brown County resident, and its first recipient is from Brown County.
The IU Surplus Store scholarship will be awarded each year to an incoming freshman with financial need from the 11-county region that is the focus of the work being done by IU Bloomington’s Center for Rural Engagement.
Recipients receive $5,000 each year for a total of $20,000 over four years and are selected internally through a collaboration between the Office of Scholarships and IU Surplus.
Solei Garland, an IU freshman and salutatorian of the Brown County High School class of 2018, is the first to receive it.
To celebrate the scholarship’s first year, the university also chose an IU senior to receive a one-time gift of $5,000. That recipient was Alec Iruri-Tucker of Bloomington.
“I have been working on this project for quite some time and I am happy to say that as a fellow Brown County resident, our first freshman scholarship went to a Brown County High graduate,” said Craig Porritt, assistant director of IU Document Service Centers.
He worked with Surplus Store Manager Todd Reid to create the scholarship out of a surplus in savings at the store.
“Our IU Surplus Store operation has many customers from Brown County, and I would like for them to know that their patronage helped made this possible,” Porritt wrote.
The IU Surplus Store picks up unwanted items from around the university and offers them to new owners — people from other university departments, faculty and staff, students and the general public. The inventory is constantly changing and includes computers, printers, office furniture, dorm and apartment-type furniture and other items.
The retail store is in the IU Warehouse at 2931 E. 10th St. in Bloomington. The IU Surplus Store also offers items through the GovDeals.com online auction site.
The store also has donated excess dorm room mattresses to area homeless shelters and partnered with a local boy to provide refurbished laptops to teens in foster care.
Funding a scholarship for local students fits perfectly into the mission and nature of IU Surplus. “We want to make our customers feel even better about shopping here, because we’re doing some really good things,” Porritt said. “We want them to know that we’re good stewards of the money we’re receiving.”
The scholarship is meant to make an IU education more accessible to a student who otherwise might not be able to afford it or would have to take out loans to make an IU education possible.
Porritt said he hopes IU Surplus will continue to make education more accessible to local students like Iruri-Tucker and Garland for many years to come.
“From idea to inception, I can honestly say that this scholarship offering is the proudest moment to date in my 25-year career here at Indiana University. I can think of no better long-term investment than our Hoosier kids,” he said.
“It is a terrific feeling knowing that this has the potential to change the lives of not only the students who receive it, but their families as well. “
