Funding Curiosity Through Scholarships

For many students and prospective students, pursuing curiosity through a college education isn’t possible without the financial assistance of scholarships. According to the U.S. Department of Education, more than 1.7 million scholarships are awarded in the United States annually for a total of $46 billion. In 2020, 58% of families used scholarships to help pay for college. At the David Eccles School of Business, $21.1 million* in scholarship money was awarded for the 2021-2022 school year, with an average scholarship amount of $5,554 and a total of 2,600 students receiving a scholarship for the academic year. Here are the stories of how a few of those students used scholarship funds to pursue their curiosities and passions.

“I am so grateful to the donors who fund my scholarship. They have given me the opportunity to dream.”

Kyle LaPlant

As a finance major at BYU, landing an internship at JP Morgan seemed like a pretty big win to Kyle LaPlant. The only problem? He didn’t like the work once he got there. “For me, it didn’t have the human aspect that is really important to me and what I wanted to do,” LaPlant said.

What LaPlant really wanted to do, he realized, was to help people. As a proud member of the Navajo Nation, he was especially curious about helping his community with better access to mental healthcare and higher education. LaPlant switched his major to psychology with an emphasis on neuropsychology.

“That was something I felt a lot of passion about because in my family and my culture, there are a lot of people who struggle psychologically because they were stripped of their culture and their identity,” he said.

But after graduation, LaPlant found himself back in business. He managed an e-commerce site for a global beauty brand and worked for an ad agency, arranging product integrations and social media marketing for clients in the gaming industry.

It was all great experience, LaPlant said, and he was succeeding in his roles, but he still wasn’t quite where he wanted to be. "I'd always wanted to go back to school and get an MBA because, for my people, we don’t get the opportunity to go to college, let alone get a graduate degree,” LaPlant said. “I always felt blessed to be in the position I’m in to pursue education. Getting an MBA was an opportunity to be a vehicle for change for my people.”

Even so, it was scary to consider leaving a job he knew he was good at to follow his curiosity into unknown territory. And then, of course, there was the matter of the money. When his acceptance to the full-time MBA program at the Eccles School of Business came with a generous scholarship award as well, “I just dropped to my knees and started crying,” he said. “I grew up without a lot of financial certainty, and no dreams to go to graduate school. Now to be here, with the financial freedom to study and focus — that’s incredible. Every day, I am grateful these donors invested in me to become a leader for tomorrow.” LaPlant also is applying a sense of curiosity to the opportunities coming his way by asking one simple question: Who cares about me and my people? He spent the summer interning with Johnson & Johnson, helping with programs that provide humanitarian aid and support to indigenous communities. Once he graduates, LaPlant plans to build an e-commerce community where native artisans can build their personal brands and sell their goods and services, instead of other companies profiting from their work and styles. “You get a new mindset, you have a new mentality,” LaPlant said. “My mind is vastly more open to a different way of thinking about things. Everything I’ve done has prepared me for this moment now, and I can’t wait to show people the best investment you can make is not in products or services, it’s people.”

Cara Marshall

For Cara Marshall, an MBA from the Eccles School was the perfect way to pivot her career and pursue a true passion.

After working for several years in the financial services industry, Marshall left full-time work for full-time parenting. When the time came to get back into the workforce, “I wanted to come back in a meaningful way,” she said. “I’ve always had an interest in healthcare but, for whatever reason, professionally it was never the path that I took. I decided that this was really my passion and I wanted to pursue it.”

Pursuing a master’s degree also helped Marshall overcome many of the roadblocks that face women re-entering the workforce.

“Even though I felt like I had decades of really important experience that I gained as a full-time mom, from the standpoint of getting a job, that’s tricky,” she said.

Marshall graduated with her MBA in the spring of 2022, a degree she was able to pursue only thanks to the support of a scholarship, she said. And her graduate degree didn’t just help her get a job, it helped her find a career she is passionate about in a field she didn’t even know existed before she came to the Eccles School.

Through her classes she was introduced to the field of population health, a healthcare industry practice that says when people are healthier, healthcare costs are lower. Population health focuses on preventive care and increasing access for underserved communities. “That’s really my passion, and I discovered it here,” Marshall said. “I wanted to come back and help the world in a meaningful way. I wanted to have my thinking elevated and go out and have an impact on people’s lives, and I found that here.”

Curiosity was key in discovering a new passion during her time as a student, Marshall said, and she already can see how crucial it will be as she starts her new career. Among the lessons she is taking with her: to ask questions without assuming you know the answers, and that open communication is the best way to learn about another person and their circumstances and needs.

“When people understand each other, we can make progress,” she said. “If we start working together and collaborating more effectively, we can make improvements. The healthcare industry is just full of people who want to make changes — and I think we can do it.”

of funds, Fisher was awarded a scholarship that allowed her to start classes in the fall of 2021.

Now she just had to decide what to study. It was time to get curious.

“I already had a little idea of what I wanted to do, but I didn’t know where to start,” Fisher said. “So, every info session, I jumped at it. I didn’t want to miss any opportunities.”

An information session on the finance major reignited a dream that Fisher had set aside — to work on the finance side of the fashion industry. After attending an information session on Information Systems, she added that to her major as well. It is all more than she could have imagined when she was cleaning houses and watching other people’s kids to put herself through university back in Ghana.

“I have realized so much of my potential since coming to the U,”

Fisher said. “There are so many things I didn’t think I could do that I now know I have the potential to do.”

When Fisher left her village at the age of 14 to pursue more education, she was homeless for six months before she was hired as a housekeeper by a woman who later offered to pay tuition for her to attend high school and then university.

Fisher will not only be the first person in her family to graduate from college — she is the first person in her family to finish elementary school. Her success has sparked the curiosity of her 36 nieces and nephews, all back in Ghana, who now see a bigger world and broader opportunities thanks to Fisher. "I make sure they are in school. That's why I am doing this. When I started taking school seriously, a lot of people told me it was a waste of time and a waste of money. But they look up to me greatly," Fisher said. "Sometimes I look at myself in the mirror and I think, 'How is this possible?' Every single day feels like a miracle. I am so grateful to the donors who fund my scholarship. They have given me the opportunity to dream." 

Catherina Elorm Fisher

Growing up in a small village in Ghana, Catherina Elorm Fisher didn’t have many opportunities to be curious. People in her village, especially girls, go to a few years of elementary school, drop out, learn to farm, get married, have kids, “and the cycle repeats,” Fisher said. But she knew there was more.

“It’s always been my dream to go to school and have a degree. I have kids who will look up to me, and now I can provide for them,” said Fisher, who is mom to 2-year-old twins.

Fisher came to Utah from Ghana in 2019 with an associate’s degree in fashion design but had difficulty finding a job. She thought of going back to school, “but the price was way above me.” After deferring admission to the Eccles School for a year due to a lack

*Total scholarship money awarded includes $6.4 million in non-resident waivers.