Matilyn Mortensen:
Welcome to Making Utah, the official podcast of the University of Utah. Here, we share stories of discovery, creativity and connection that shape campus and our state for the future. I'm Matilyn Mortensen and you are listening to You for U, the student-facing podcast where we explore stories, tips and resources to help you make the most of your college experience.

All right, Ginger, I'm so happy to have you join me today. I'm really excited to talk more about the Office of Nationally Competitive Scholarships and how students can use that to access really exciting opportunities. Will you start out by introducing yourself and telling us a little bit about what your office does?

Ginger Smoak:
Of course. Thank you for having me. My name is Ginger Smoak. Besides being the director of the Office of Nationally Competitive Scholarships, I'm also a member of the faculty in the Honors College and the office is really a great opportunity for students to find out information about both undergraduate and graduate scholarship opportunities. We are really a great resource for students who might be thinking about graduate school or other kinds of research or opportunities teaching English, for example, in another country that they would like to pursue after graduation.

Matilyn Mortensen:
That is so cool. Can you tell me a little bit about what the types of opportunities are that you help students apply for?

Ginger Smoak:
Absolutely. Currently, we advise for 28 separate scholarships. Some of these scholarships are Rhodes, Marshall or Churchill Scholarships in the UK. Those tend to be for master's degrees in any discipline, any subject. We also have the Fulbright Scholarship and several other opportunities besides going to graduate school and getting a graduate degree. If you are interested, for example, in doing a research project and you have an idea, we can help you apply for a scholarship or a fellowship opportunity that will allow you to do that. So we have a couple of other options besides Fulbright, for example, to do that. That includes the DAAD RISE in Germany, for example. It includes the Gates Cambridge Scholarship in England and a bunch of Asian scholarships as well.

Matilyn Mortensen:
So if you are a student who's interested in this process, I know that it can feel really daunting. I've heard about the applications and I know that's where your office comes in. Where's the starting point for students? Do they need to have a scholarship in mind? Can they come in to get ideas of where their skillset might fit? How do you guys start working with them?

Ginger Smoak:
That's a great question. They don't have to have any particular scholarship in mind. They can come to us and just say, "Give me all of the information and options." And we will, as an office, run down a bunch of opportunities for them. One of the things that our office does also is we help them prepare the application itself, which as you say, can be daunting. The process sometimes takes a very long time. We like to get people to come in nine months, six months ahead of time so that we can help them with the entire process. Some of these scholarships are endorsed scholarships, which require an interview, an endorsement interview and a university or institutional endorsement. And so those take a little bit longer and are a little bit more in depth as well.

Matilyn Mortensen:
So what are the resources that you offer for this application process and when should students start talking to your office in order to maximize the support that they can receive?

Ginger Smoak:
Great question. They should come to see us absolutely as soon as they learn about our office, so today. We are trying to get students to come in their freshman year. And we have several students with whom we have been communicating for multiple years now. By the time they get to be a junior or a senior, they've already hopefully had multiple meetings with us checking in. We have different kinds of resources. We have workshops. We can read drafts of their personal statements and other kinds of application materials, help them work on their narrative. And one of the things that we like to say is that part of the process is a little bit of a soul-searching, thinking about not just what you want to do, but why you want to do that thing, where you want to do it and how that's going to help you get to the next step in your academic and career arc.

Matilyn Mortensen:
That makes a lot of sense. So I love the encouragement to start early. I think sometimes your first year of college, it feels like you should wait until you know more about yourself. It's very awesome to know that your office wants to be a part of those conversations the student may be having with others. If you though are maybe a little further in your journey, maybe you're a junior or a senior, maybe starting to think about grad school, so you didn't come in when you were younger, what can your office do for students that are maybe learning about you a little later?

Ginger Smoak:
The majority of our students come to us as juniors, I would say. And while that is later than we would like, it's certainly not too late. We can help them think about the most logical scholarships for their academic and career goals. And we can look at the deadlines, look at which ones they're eligible for and rank those or weed out the ones that maybe are not necessarily worth swatting for at that point.

Matilyn Mortensen:
I know that these applications are really intensive and obviously the trade-off is if you complete an intensive application, you have a chance for a really cool experience. However, sometimes that can feel like a hard trade-off to make when there's so many things vying for your attention. What do you feel students gain from going through this application process, whether or not they receive the award they're hoping for?

Ginger Smoak:
We like to say that no effort as far as applications go is wasted. If you are thinking about the time and energy and soul-searching that these applications require as time well spent, thinking about graduate school applications, thinking about other kinds of opportunities that require you to write a personal statement or to write a narrative about your goals, then you've already put in that time and effort and certainly not wasted. Truthfully, the majority of students, for example, who apply for something like a Rhodes Scholarship are not going to win the scholarship, right? But they can absolutely get into graduate school with that application. So we really encourage students to see it that way, that this is not wasted effort.

Matilyn Mortensen:
As the director, are there any resources you have or programs you offer that you especially like or that you think are maybe fun and unexpected?

Ginger Smoak:
So, I mentioned a little earlier that we have some opportunities, for example, to go and teach English abroad through the Fulbright and that can be a really not just fulfilling opportunity, but it's such a fun way to engage in a community. It's not just teaching or learning, it's also maybe getting involved in a local community group, maybe joining a band. Maybe you're interested in playing a sport in your newfound community. And these are all ways that we can build bridges between communities, between cultures. And so those are really fun for students to imagine themselves doing.

Matilyn Mortensen:
So if students are listening to this, if they're getting excited, or even if they're just like, "Maybe I'm curious," how do they reach out to your office?

Ginger Smoak:
They can reach out directly to me, my email, ginger.smoak@utah.edu, or they can reach out to the office and that email is competitivescholarships@utah.edu. And once they reach out to us, we get back to them very quickly and we usually can set up a meeting. We have an office in the Marriot Honors Community so they can come in and have a physical meeting with us and those are fantastic. We love to do that. Or we can also meet by Zoom or another platform if they prefer.

Matilyn Mortensen:
And I'll put those in the show notes so they're easy to find. As we wrap up, is there anything you want to share, anything you feel like we missed that's important to add?

Ginger Smoak:
I don't know if there's anything we missed, but I will say that we have rarely had a student who decided that they really wanted to take part in this process who say that it wasn't worth it. They will say, "Yes, that was a lot of work, but I learned so much about myself and I'm so happy I did that." And if they happen to receive a scholarship or a fellowship or some other kind of award, that's even better.

Matilyn Mortensen:
Thank you so much for your time today. It was really lovely to visit with you.

Ginger Smoak:
Thank you so much.

Matilyn Mortensen:
Thanks for listening to Making Utah. Subscribe wherever you get your podcast and stay connected with us on attheu.utah.edu.