Scholarship endowment honors Kologi, Hyke

Editor’s note: This version corrects that the endowment was made to Havre Public Schools Education Foundation.

Havre Public Schools Education Foundation recently received its largest endowment ever, $100,000, from former Havre High School student Wendy (Johnson) Nevala which will create a renewable scholarship for a female graduate looking to go into the sciences in college.

The Ron Kologi and Doug Hyke Memorial Scholarship is named after a pair of science teachers who worked at Havre High School for many years and had a huge impact on many students, including Nevala, who graduated in 1985.

Nevala now works as a principal research technologist running the lab for a clinician who specializes in metastatic melanoma at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester Minnesota, where she's been employed for almost 30 years, and she said Kologi and Hyke affected her profoundly, albeit in different ways.

She said she wanted to give back to the place where she started, and this scholarship is a way to do that.

"Life has treated me well," she said. "I worked hard, but I did get a little bit lucky finding the right people at the right time, I just want to do something good for the community."

Havre Public Schools Education Foundation Executive Director Amanda Meyer said this scholarship is twice the size of any the education foundation has received and is its first renewable scholarship, good for four years of a student's college career.

Meyer said the fact that this scholarship is renewable is very important due to the rising costs of higher education.

She said, even in Montana, which has many moderately priced schools, students often have to take loans that can be crippling, especially factoring in all of the secondary costs of going to school.

"It's not just tuition and fees, it's your cost of living, room and board, the books," she said.

The Ron Kologi and Doug Hyke Memorial scholarship is available to female students graduating from Havre High School and majoring in a science field at any accredited college or university. The scholarship will be renewable for up to four years. The 2021 award will be up to $2,000 and subsequent years will be based on endowment income.

Applications for the scholarship opened Feb 1. and close April 1 and can be found at https://hpseducationfoundation.com .

Kologi and Hyke

Meyer said the scholarship's namesakes had a far-reaching effect on many people in the community, with more former students getting in touch with Havre Public Schools wanting to contribute to the endowment.

"I've heard quite a few people who grew up here who have great memories of both of them," she said, " ... They've made quite an impact on people."

Both retired as teachers at Havre High School.

Hyke died of natural causes at age 73 June 11, 2002, and Kologi died from complications of multiple sclerosis at age 71 Sept. 22, 2008.

Nevala said Kologi in particular showed great love for the things he taught, which he passed on to many of his students.

"You could feel his passion for it when he was in the classroom," she said. "He was funny, he was fun, and he treated us with respect. ... When you have a teacher like that, who loves what he's teaching, he inspires you to love it, and he certainly did that for me."

She said Kologi was a little disappointed when she told him that she'd be going into biology instead of chemistry - his own subject - but was happy she continued in the sciences.

Bev Kologi, Ron Kologi's wife, said when it came to his professional life, the only thing her husband loved more than chemistry was the people he taught it to.

"Ron loved science, he loved chemistry, but most of all he loved his students and teaching," she said.

She said he loved it when former students stopped by to visit or sent him a letter, and he always encouraged students to go on to college and learn throughout their lives.

"He wanted to teach students to use their own minds and think for themselves," she said. "He wouldn't just give an answer he'd be patient and wait for them to think through problems."

Kologi said her family is very grateful for Nevala's gift and her husband would have been as well.

"He'd be so pleased to know about this scholarship," she said.

Nevala said Hyke was a very different kind of teacher, but also had a big impact on her.

"He was kind of a gruff, crabby-on-the-outside kind of guy, he wasn't going to take any crap from high school kids," she said. "I think we need more of that in the classroom."

She said she remembers a test that was going to be held one Monday, but she had been sick all weekend and she wasn't able to study.

She said she asked him early in the morning if he would let her take it early Tuesday morning after she had time to prepare, saying she'd take it if she had to but just didn't have the time to get ready.

"He was sizing me up and looking at me and finally he said, 'Well, because you're not a rinky-dink, I'll let you do that.' That was his highest compliment," she said.

Nevala said that response may seem extreme by today's standards, but to her it was an affirmation that she carried with her for a long time.

"It was a different time, but I thought it was awesome," she said.

"Everyone has those people in their past that inspire them," she added, "and I think we need to remember those people and think about how we can do that for someone else who is coming up behind us."

Women in science

Nevala said the reason she chose to make this scholarship for women specifically is because they still face struggles working in the sciences due to the expectations places on them that men just don't have.

"We need to shake of these stereotypical ideas of what are men's jobs, and what are women's jobs," she said. "These attitudes still exist."

She said people at Mayo Clinic have always treated her with respect regardless of he gender, but restrictive expectations for women are still alive and well and can have a negative effect on women and girls who want to go into the sciences, and these expectations are ones she experienced, especially after having children.

"When you have children you get asked, 'Will you be quitting work and staying home?' Men don't get asked that question," she said.

She said she's even had friends who are stay-at-home mothers who she needed to defend her decision to continue working to, even though her work is something that she finds incredibly fulfilling.

"I don't love my kids any less because I work," she said. "... It's just part of who I am."

She said these mindsets have an effect on women and girls when they decide what kind of career they can have, and it can cause them to lower their expectations for what they can do.

Nevala said this way of thinking can put women in a very uncomfortable position mentally, one that men just don't have to deal with in the same way due to different societal expectations.

"For me, and a lot of the working moms I know, you're kind of put in a situation when no matter what you feel guilty," she said. "If you're at home taking care of your kids you're thinking about all things you didn't accomplish at work today, and when you're at work you're thinking 'I should be home with my kids.'"

She said even beyond the specific issue of working with kids, these expectations manifest in small but consistent ways.

"One thing that happens to me all the time is that when I say I work at Mayo Clinic, everyone asks if I'm a nurse," she said. "Nothing against our nurses at all, but just because you are a female working at Mayo Clinic doesn't mean you are a nurse."

Nevala said these cultural attitudes hold people back for no legitimate reason, and women working in the sciences shouldn't need to feel apologetic for being who they are.