Third Floor Caraway Girls Help Student Persist

Merriam-Webster provides more than one definition for the word angel.

The second entry under that term describes an angel as “a person who is very good, kind or beautiful.”

By that definition, Arkansas Tech University student Shyanne Mackey (photographed, right) had several angels looking out for her education and her future.

Mackey is the recipient of a $2,500 Third Floor Caraway Girls Scholarship, a philanthropic effort by a group of Arkansas Tech Class of 1959 alumnae. Lou Nell McCraw Davis (photographed, left) made the presentation on behalf of the group.

“I had kind of given up hope,” said Mackey. “I was struggling in school, and I was in the wrong major. I considered giving up and quitting school. This gave me hope. If somebody else believes in me, maybe I should believe in me.”

A junior from Clarksville, Mackey will change her major to biology for the spring 2018 semester and continue her studies because of the gift she received from the Third Floor Caraway Girls.

The story of the scholarship dates back approximately 60 years to a lifelong sisterhood that was developed by a group of women in Caraway Residence Hall. Their friendships were rekindled in 2009 when they gathered for Homecoming at Arkansas Tech, and they began their scholarship in 2012 as a means of honoring their classmates.

The fall 2017 Third Floor Caraway Girls Scholarship was presented to Mackey in honor of Carolyn Leek Allen, Janice Skelton Robinson and Virginia Horn Sizemore.