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Inaugural Mayor Award to Aid Students’ College Education

Jul 06, 2016 08:41AM ● By Bryan Scott

Mayor Ted Eyre awards the inaugural Mayor Scholarship Award to Lincoln Evans at the Murray High School Scholarship and Awards Banquet on May 23. Jarod Ivins was the recipient of the award at Cottonwood High School. – Travis Barton

By Travis Barton | [email protected]


Students can receive awards for athletic achievement, academic endeavor or even simple participation. For two particular students, one each from Murray and Cottonwood High School, some awards come from the Mayor of your city.

 Lincoln Evans, senior at Murray High, and Jarod Ivins, senior at Cottonwood High, were both recipients of the first-ever Mayor’s Award Scholarships. The award sees two separate $1,000 scholarships go to two local high school students.

 Murray Mayor Ted Eyre said there’s a line in the budget for Mayor’s Special Projects and this year he wanted to put some of it towards college scholarships for two students.

 In order for the students to earn the award, Eyre said they needed something different from your typical awards.

 “I didn’t want it to be based exclusively on GPA or athletics or music or theatre, I just wanted it to go to a person who the counselors and teachers had selected,” Eyre told the audience as he presented the award to Evans at Murray High School.

 Eyre met with the principals and counselors at both schools to go over the parameters and criteria since they would be the ones choosing.

 “[Needed to pick] a person who exemplifies someone who has overcome maybe some challenges but has really gone forward to qualify themselves for college and performed a great deal of service to the school and the community,” Eyre said.

 Eyre said he wanted to be out of the choosing process and leave it up to the counselors and teachers.

 “They did, and they presented me this wonderful resume,” Eyre said.

 Eyre said he was very impressed with the first two recipients of the award. Speaking about Evans, Eyre read a few of his goals that were on the back of the resume presented to him.

 “’My goal is to get a good education and to get a good job to contribute to my community and be successful with my family, I am planning to go to college with this goal,’” Eyre said quoting Evans.

 Evans was on the tennis team, madrigals, acapella with a 3.7 GPA while overcoming many health challenges in his life. He plans on attending Utah State and majoring in mechanical engineering.

 The schools will put the money in a trust fund and hold it until the student is registered for school.

 Ivins, who was nominated by his mom, said he was surprised when he won the award at the year-end banquet.

 “It was just a fun moment with all my friends and my parents to see that I was able to win that,” Ivins said.

 As a Murray native, Ivins said it was cool receive an award from the Mayor.

 “It’ll be nice being able to start off college with a little bit of cushion,” Ivins said.

 Winning the award has meant a lot to Ivins because it validates what you do.  

 “Try to make sure you include everyone because that was a big thing, I think, that helped me win,” Ivins said. “Just befriend everyone no matter what the case is, you don’t know what people are going through so even just a smile or a hello can make a kid’s day and go a long way for them.”

 Ivins will be serving an LDS mission in August in Capetown, South Africa before starting his education at BYU where he’ll study business.