For the third year, the University of Arizona hosted a dinner to honor CDH Scholarship recipients. Papa is one of three CDH Board members and it is a wonderful annual opportunity for them to meet, talk, and have dinner with the UA students receiving CDH Scholarships, both academic and for study abroad. The CDH Academic Scholarship is renewable for four years as long as the recipient maintains their qualifications. Original eligibility requirements are: be an Arizona resident, have a 3.2 high school GPA (and maintain a 3.0 UA GPA), demonstrate financial need via FAFSA, with preference given to first generation college students. Close to 140 students have received CDH Scholarships over the past three years.
About 60 happy and appreciative students attended this year’s dinner on February 19, along with several UA administrators. Most lingered after dinner to talk to each other and the CDH Board members. A sophomore girl that I sat next to at last year’s dinner, sat at our table. She was sitting next to a sophomore boy that also attended last year. About mid way through dinner, the boy told us he and the girl were dating. She noticed his shirt from behind as they left the dinner last year, then saw him wearing the same shirt a week or so later on campus, and spoke to him. They’ve been dating since. CDH has become a matchmaker!
There were a two student recipients of CDH Study Abroad Scholarships, that spoke to the group about their study abroad experiences. The first was a young woman from Morenci, a town of 1500 people in eastern Arizona. She is in her third year of receiving a CDH scholarship. We connected at the first dinner three years ago and have stayed in touch since. She studied abroad in Verona, Italy, last summer, in the program we joined for a day in June 2018, so we reminisced about our seven courses of pasta lunch we enjoyed together in Verona. The other speaker was a young man in his mid 20’s, going to UA on the GI bill after serving in the Air Force. H studied abroad last summer or fall semester and said he doesn’t remember the specific classes he took his freshman or sophomore years or specific things the professors said, but that he remembers all the details of studying abroad in Switzerland in an international political science program, meeting ambassadors and traveling to places he had never been, and it has changed the trajectory of his life, as he has changed his major and his life goals. His story was reaffirming of why we support students to study abroad, both in the CDH Academic Scholarship and the separate CDH Study Abroad Scholarship. It was a very enjoyable evening!
"Tucson Mountain Park was established April 1929. The Pima County Parks
Commission was established to oversee
the park. At approximately 20,000 acres, the park is one of the largest
natural resource areas owned and managed by a local government in the
U.S. The park has approximately 62 miles of non-motorized shared-use
trials. The park’s trails are open to hikers, equestrians, and mountain
bikers, and provide a wide range of outstanding experiences, including
technical challenges, and breathtaking views." 
