Fund for Mount Jewett students reaches $1 million

 When Mary Ann Lambertsen endowed a scholarship at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford in memory of her parents in 2012, she never imagined it would grow as much as it has.

After her first gift of $100,000 to set up the Anna and Art Turnquist Mount Jewett Scholarship fund, she kept contributing and enjoyed meeting each year with her scholarship students – either in person or via teleconference. This spring, her fund reached $1 million and has helped 197 students from Mount Jewett and Kane.

Lambertsen, a former Fisher-Price executive, said she didn’t set out to reach $1 million in her fund. “Over the years it added up to that, and I’m delighted because it means more opportunity for students.”

Earlier this fall, Lambertsen, who has moved from the area, was able to visit campus in person and meet some of the 25 current students receiving help from a Turnquist scholarship.

“They were very polite and very thankful for the scholarship, so that pleases me,” she said. Lambertsen always has something in common with her scholarship recipients since she grew up in Mount Jewett, 25 miles south of Bradford, and graduated from Kane High School in 1957.  

The Turnquist scholarships are for students who show financial need and are from Mount Jewett or Kane, where Mount Jewett children attend school. Preference is given to students pursuing math or science majors.

One of the students Lambertsen met with during her visit in October was Jessica Buhl, a senior biology education 7-12 major from Kane who will be student teaching in Kane and Bradford during the spring semester.  

Buhl told Lambertsen that she is a triplet. “As you can imagine, sending three kids to college at the same time can be extremely stressful,” Buhl wrote in a thank you letter to her benefactor. “I appreciate your willingness to contribute to my future. You have allowed me to focus on my learning.”

Lambertsen herself went to college with the help of a scholarship at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (today Carnegie-Mellon). Although she received a scholarship from Stackpole Carbon Co., she also worked nights as a switchboard operator to pay her tuition. Her parents helped, too, but “they were not wealthy people,” she said.

Lambertsen went on to get a master’s degree in experimental psychology from Columbia University, then worked for Ohio Bell, Bell Laboratories and eventually AT&T before becoming the vice president of human resources for Fisher-Price in East Aurora, N.Y.

But Mount Jewett stayed close to her heart, and when she found out that the elementary school in town had closed at the end of the 2006-07 school year, she joined the Mount Jewett Charter School Coalition, helping them raise money for a charter school. When plans for the charter school fell through, she looked for another way to help students in Mount Jewett.

When she endowed the scholarship, she said, “I wanted to encourage the students of Mount Jewett to go on to college, especially in the science and math areas, because I think you can contribute a lot to the world with that kind of background.”

One of the former students she has helped is Nathaniel Eckstrom ’18-’20, who went on to graduate from the university’s Pittsburgh campus in 2022 with a degree in political science.

“I loved how it was able to cover expenses in college that my other [financial aid] would not cover,” he said. “I hope that more young scholars from Mount Jewett are able to receive this scholarship.”

The Turnquist scholarships are among hundreds of donor scholarships that returning Pitt-Bradford students are automatically considered for. During the 2023-24 academic year, 424 students received 611 donor scholarships totaling $834,461.