The Record Newspapers - Hometown News For Orange County, Texas

The Lamar University Foundation has established a new endowed scholarship for undergraduate and graduate students majoring in communication. The Janice Trammell Scholarship in Communication was funded through donations from the LU Foundation Board of Trustees in honor of Trammell upon her retirement as executive director of the Foundation.

“The communication department gets good students,” said O’Brien Stanley, chair of the Department of Communications. “Because this scholarship is available to all communication students, this will help encourage them to stay in school.”

Raised in Midlothian, Texas, Trammell graduated from Midlothian High School in 1969 and later became the first member of her family to receive a college education. She received her Associate of Arts degree from El Centro Community College in Dallas, where she was employed. She received her Bachelor of Business Administration in 1985 and her Master of Science in speech in 1992, both from Lamar University.

Trammell began working for Lamar in 1983 as a staff member for Continuing Education and as an adjunct faculty member for the Department of Communication.

In 2001, Trammell became the executive director of the LU Foundation, also serving as the director of development for the Division of University Advancement.

In these positions, Trammell oversaw the daily management of the Foundation and was responsible for fundraising to establish scholarships and endowments to support Lamar University.

The retirement gift from the board of trustees was all the more appropriate since her work included seeking gifts that would establish student scholarships.

She was also integral in the foundation’s restructuring process and with the Investing in the Future Campaign before her retirement in 2013.

After more than 36 years of experience, Trammell’s passion for Lamar, for higher education and for assisting students with educational expenses can be reflected and preserved for years to come.

“After many years of securing gifts to establish scholarships that would reduce a student’s cost of obtaining a higher education, I am honored to have my own named scholarship that will exist in perpetuity at Lamar University,” Trammell said. “I am grateful to the board of trustees for their kindness and generosity with such a thoughtful and appropriate retirement gift.”

The Department of Communication, part of the College of Fine Arts and Communication, is growing and is more diverse than ever before. The Department of Communication has recently added a four-year online degree program and is focusing more heavily on incorporating web-design into its fields of study. The communication department offers degree plans in the fields of advertising, broadcasting, corporate communications, film studies, and journalism. The department offers students first-hand experience in these fields through its many student organizations and through involvement with broadcasting on KVLU-FM, working for LUTV-Channel 7 and writing for the award-winning University Press.

“Janice has always been such a kind and appreciative person and we are so grateful the scholarship was established for the communication department,” Stanley said. “This scholarship absolutely dovetails into everything we do,”

For more information about establishing an endowed scholarship, contact the Lamar University Foundation at (409) 880-2117.