Each year scholarships help students pay tuition and other expenses. During the past six months, family and friends have created several scholarships not only to help students but also to remember loved ones.
Bill Platt, Carrie Lynn Yoder’s mentor, and Lee Stanton, Yoder’s boyfriend, set up the Carrie Lynn Yoder Memorial Scholarship for the study of Conservation Ecology of Coastal Environments March 13, the day her body was found in Whiskey Bay. Police linked Yoder as the fifth serial killer victim March 18.
Platt said he expected a memorial service, so instead of flowers he asked for a donation toward the scholarship fund.
The scholarship has exceeded $25,000 since March.
Platt said the response shows how people have been touched by the incident.
“The greatest gift is life and the ability to follow one’s dreams,” Platt said. “People recognize this and are giving their support.”
Platt also said this is the first time awareness of the issue exists and people feel compelled to respond.
“There has been a response on the part of women to the fact there is a serial killer out there,” Platt said.
Stanton said the scholarship will be for a female graduate student studying coastal ecology and restoration.
“It is not just in the biological sciences,” Stanton said. “Just as long as the research is focused on the environment.”
Platt said he hopes the scholarship exceeds “hundreds of thousands,” so it can significantly benefit the recipient.
Stanton hopes it will become a prestigious award and support graduate students for three to four years.
Platt said LSU Foundation helped get the scholarship started and offered ways to make it more effective.
Platt said no organized fund-raising exists for the scholarship, but LSU Foundation will help raise funds through corporate donors.
He said University students and faculty and Baton Rouge residents have donated money.
“It is very heart-warming that people have had a desire to help make this happen,” Platt said.
Though the Yoder scholarship has received much response in a short time, another University scholarship also has received community support.
The Charlotte Murray Pace Memorial MBA Scholarship has raised more than $69,000, according to the E. J. Ourso Web site.
The Web site said the MBA Class of 2002 established the scholarship to commemorate Pace’s “life and achievement.”
Pace was murdered May 31 and was later linked to the serial killer.
The scholarship will be awarded to a full-time, second-year MBA graduate in the E.J. Ourso College of Business Administration.
Students at Millsaps College in Mississippi and from the Kappa Delta Sorority also started scholarships to honor Pace.
Ann Pace, Murray Pace’s mother, said these scholarships are a wonderful gesture and very thoughtful.
“This is what I consider to be a touching tribute to the quality of friends she has,” Ann Pace said.
Students in the School of Social Work also are funding a scholarship for their classmate Christine Moore.
Moore was reported missing May 24, and her body was found June 16, but her murder has not been linked to the serial killer.
Her classmates have begun raising the $10,000 to endow a scholarship but are not finished, said Amy Fontana, the person in charge of raising funds for the Christine Moore memorial fund.
Fontana said the class hoped to raise the funds by their May graduation date. But Fontana said she plans to continue raising money after graduation.
In addition to scholarship funds, families also have set up reward funds.
Pam Kinamore’s family donated $75,000 for a reward fund to the person who helps catch the serial killer. Best-selling author Patricia Cornwell also donated $25,000 to the reward fund, Ann Pace said.
The Baton Rouge Crime Stoppers and the Baton Rouge Area Foundation gave $100,000 to the reward fund for the person who gives a tip leading to the serial killer’s capture.
But the Crime Stoppers reward has a time limit of Aug. 1, Ann Pace said.