PSU unveils Cogan scholarship at April 19 event
By Jenn Director Knudsen
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On Feb. 19, the day his wife would have celebrated her 68th birthday, Nathan Cogan spoke passionately about the late Sara Glasgow Cogan and the new Portland State University scholarship that he helped create to honor her memory.
The Sara Glasgow Cogan Scholarship, through the Harold Schnitzer Family Program in Judaic Studies at Portland State University, will be awarded to two students April 19.
The inaugural event is expected to draw about 200 people and keynote speaker will be Ruth Messinger, president of the American Jewish World Service.
Sara Cogan, the eldest sibling to three brothers and mother of three sons, was fatally hit by a car while walking in Northwest Portland on Feb. 1, 2006.
At the time, Nathan and Sara, married for 46 years, both were deeply involved in several Jewish and social-justice organizations. Nathan had retired six years earlier as an English professor; of his 35 years as an academic, he spent a quarter century at PSU.
The Portland Jewish community might best remember Sara as a member and eventually president of the Cedar Sinai Park board of directors. In that capacity, she doggedly led a $25 million building campaign for the CSP campus, which includes the Robison Jewish Health Center and Rose Schnitzer Manor.
One of her brothers, Bob Glasgow, 62, a counsel with Black Helterline, LLP, said this tremendous undertaking of Sara's represented "the pinnacle of her involvement."
Looking back at his wife's tragic death 14 months ago, Nathan said he had to take a hiatus from his volunteer work with American Friends of Kehilla and PSU's Judaic Studies, and he left the American Jewish Committee board.
Such activism, he said, "was disrupted by Sara's death; I honestly did not have the psychic energy for charity work in 2006. But I'm getting back to that now."
Most visibly on the local level with the new Judaic Studies program's academic and service-learning scholarship.
Nathan says he's been working with PSU faculty since last October to define and finalize the Sara Glasgow Cogan scholarship, for which he's providing seed money. The program's goal is to establish a $70,000 endowment so that the two (or, eventually, more) annual awards exist in perpetuity.
"The idea of a scholarship is very consistent with Sara's work," said Nathan, 70, a Havurah Shalom member.
"She would have loved it," he added, not only for its projected benefits to the local Jewish community but also because she had been the recipient of key scholarships—starting with B'nai B'rith camp as a young girl, recalled brother Bob Glasgow—that helped mold her Jewish and academic life.
A $1,000 to $1,500 award toward spring tuition will go to both an undergraduate minoring in Judaic Studies and a graduate student. Their charge will be to work with a Jewish cultural or communal organization on a hands-on project "with a significant academic component," according to the scholarship application.
The student—of any ethnic or religious background—could select from myriad local partner organizations, including CSP, the Oregon Jewish Community Foundation, the Oregon Jewish Museum and the Oregon Holocaust Resource Center, Nathan said.
Michael Weingrad, academic director of PSU's Judaic Studies program, who's been working with Nathan on the scholarship, emphasizes the importance of the awards' academic and service-learning components. And he's quite enthusiastic about its impact, both within the program and the local Jewish community.
"We not only offer academic coursework but provide students with a sense of the actuality and vitality of the Portland Jewish community," Weingrad said in a phone interview.
A PSU alumna with a master's in public administration, Sara set her sights—for herself and her community—high throughout her life. The sights are equally high for the outcome of the scholarships that bear her name.
Said Weingrad: "There doesn't have to be a limit to the kinds of projects that become encouraged through this."