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Memorial scholarship honors her work
A decade after her death, Shelie Macias’s memorial scholarship has recently become endowed
The Advocate
A decade has come and gone since the death of Mt. Hood Community College employee Shelie Macias, but students are still being aided in her honor, just as she would have continued doing.
The Shelie Macias Scholarship, in its eighth year, has been given to three students over the years and is open for applications once again.
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The scholarship, which just recently became endowed, is open to non-native students, the students Macias strove to help when she was alive.
According to Linda Gerber, campus president of the Portland Community College Sylvania campus and Macias’ former boss at MHCC, Macias had a natural calling for helping those in need.
“She cared a lot about social justice and making the college a welcoming place for those who wouldn’t feel welcome otherwise,” Gerber said. “Shelie had a big heart. She had a lot of compassion for people who didn’t have a silver spoon.”
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Macias, 29 years old at the time of her death, was killed in December 1998 when she was hit by a truck in the MHCC parking area. At the time, she was the coordinator of the Learning Success Center.
Her mother, JoyLynn Woodard, who has been an employee at MHCC since the early ‘80s and continues to work at the Bruning Center, said that due to the number of people at MHCC that knew and loved her daughter, a scholarship was established in her name by the American Association of Women in Community Colleges (AAWCC). To keep funding the now sustainable scholarship, there are three annual book sales. The last of these sales this year will take place on Cinco de Mayo, May 5, from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the Vista Dining Room.
Woodard said they are hosting the sale on Cinco de Mayo because of her daughter’s extensive work with Hispanic students on campus. According to Gerber, at the time Macias worked, she was one of only a handful of employees who were fluent in Spanish at MHCC.
Apart from her main job on campus, Macias was also called upon multiple times to communicate with Hispanic students about information regarding the college.
At her memorial service, many of the students she had helped came back to say their goodbyes because of the major impact she had had on their lives.
Ten years later, the book sales in her name are a constant way for those who knew and loved her to keep her memory alive.
Many of the books at the sales are donated by students and employees at MHCC as well as by community members and organizations.
The sales “are the biggest thing we do,” said Woodard.
Those who remember Macias, her husband and the three young children she left behind, work to keep her memory alive on campus.Besides the scholarship, a garden on campus was dedicated to her memory shortly after her death and is continually maintained.
“Shelie had a very vivacious and bubbly personality. She just loved people and she had more energy than any five people combined,” said Gerber. “I miss Shelie. She was a beautiful person. It was a horrible loss for her family, her friends, and the college. I’m saddened most of all that she didn’t get the chance to realize her potential or see her beautiful children grow up.”
Gerber believes the scholarship is a way she would have wanted to be remembered.
“I think she would have been thrilled to know that she had a scholarship in her name. It’s exactly what she would have wanted — giving an opportunity to someone who may not have had one otherwise,” she said. “I don’t know why — what stirred her in her soul to care so much — but she did.”