Motter Scholarship Honors Longtime Teacher
A $2,500 scholarship commemorating the life of Anna Catherine Brown Motter has been awarded at Truman.
A longtime area schoolteacher and mother of four, Catherine Motter passed away March 19, 2009 at the age of 99. She received a Bachelor’s Degree in Education in 1934 from the University, then known as Northeast Missouri State Teachers College, at a time when women obtained only about five percent of college degrees awarded.
Motter paid for her own education by working her way through college by teaching in Audrain County Missouri rural schools at a time when a teaching degree was not required.
Many of her years of post degree teaching were in the rural schools of Adair County as well as three years in the Novinger, Mo., elementary school.
Throughout her life, Motter’s interests were her family, music, traveling, church, reading and the beauty of nature. Those who knew her remember her as a positive person who looked for and found the best in people. Motter and her husband, Marion Motter, made sure their four children received college degrees.
In her honor, her four children have awarded the Anna Catherine Brown Motter scholarship in the amount of $2,500. The scholarship requires the recipient be a fifth-year student at Truman studying in the Master of Arts in Education program. They must also be a Missouri resident with a grade point average of 3.0 or better and have significant financial need.
The Anna Catherine Brown Motter scholarship recently was awarded to Clare Cummings, of Kansas City, Mo. An education and psychology major, Cummings plans to teach elementary education in the future.
During her time as a student at Truman, Cummings has volunteered as a Girl Scout Troop Co-Leader for third grade Brownies and has worked at the Kirksville Day Care Center.
A longtime area schoolteacher and mother of four, Catherine Motter passed away March 19, 2009 at the age of 99. She received a Bachelor’s Degree in Education in 1934 from the University, then known as Northeast Missouri State Teachers College, at a time when women obtained only about five percent of college degrees awarded.
Motter paid for her own education by working her way through college by teaching in Audrain County Missouri rural schools at a time when a teaching degree was not required.
Many of her years of post degree teaching were in the rural schools of Adair County as well as three years in the Novinger, Mo., elementary school.
Throughout her life, Motter’s interests were her family, music, traveling, church, reading and the beauty of nature. Those who knew her remember her as a positive person who looked for and found the best in people. Motter and her husband, Marion Motter, made sure their four children received college degrees.
In her honor, her four children have awarded the Anna Catherine Brown Motter scholarship in the amount of $2,500. The scholarship requires the recipient be a fifth-year student at Truman studying in the Master of Arts in Education program. They must also be a Missouri resident with a grade point average of 3.0 or better and have significant financial need.
The Anna Catherine Brown Motter scholarship recently was awarded to Clare Cummings, of Kansas City, Mo. An education and psychology major, Cummings plans to teach elementary education in the future.
During her time as a student at Truman, Cummings has volunteered as a Girl Scout Troop Co-Leader for third grade Brownies and has worked at the Kirksville Day Care Center.
