Young women of St. John who are enrolled in college or who plan to attend this fall are invited to apply for a Ruby Rutnik Scholarship. St. John female students who are already enrolled in college may also apply for a scholarship award.
The scholarship fund makes awards of up to $5,000 to qualified female students in honor of Ruby Rutnik, a senior at American University who died in a car accident in 1996. “This year marks the 29th year without Ruby, and on April 9, she would have been 50 years old,” said her mother, Janet Cook-Rutnik. “This is hard for us to contemplate as our forever-young girl was a 21-year-old senior at American University at the time of her death.”
In 1997, an annual softball tournament was organized for female high school students throughout the Virgin Islands as a way to fund the scholarship.
In 2014, the Rutnik family decided to end the tournaments and use the funds already raised to establish an endowment through the Gifft Hill School on St. John. This arrangement was especially appropriate as Ruby was one of the original preschool students when the school was founded as the Pine Peace School in 1978.
The goal of the scholarship is to ease the burden of paying for higher education, especially for those attending colleges and universities off-island. Since its inception, the fund has awarded more than $200,000 to over three dozen recipients.
Applications may be obtained from school counselors or by sending an email to Janet Cook-Rutnik at cookrutnik@gmail.com, or by contacting the Rutniks at 340-693-8069. On St. John, applications may be picked up at Pelican’s Post in Cruz Bay, where Connections was formerly.
The deadline for submission is May 10. Notice will be given on or before May 20.
Those wishing to contribute to the scholarship fund are asked to make their checks payable to Gifft Hill School, noting RRSF on the bottom of the check, and send by mail to: GHS, 5000 Estate Enighed #356, St. John, VI 00830.
Use the following QR code to download a digital copy of the application:
