Two newly married, recent Fort Hays State University graduates, Tyler Thompson and Jessica Tormey, have already solidified their allegience to FHSU, setting up a scholarship for students breaking into the world using their degree.
The Tyler Thompson and Jessica Tormey World Ready Fund assists business education and informatics majors who have expenses related to leaving campus and employment for student teaching and internships.
The Thompsons have started with a commitment of $1,000 per year, the minimum amount for a FHSU scholarship, hoping to add more in the future.
“Tyler and I have talked a lot about giving back to FHSU,” Tormey said. “In the fall of 2012, we were both doing internships. Tyler was in Washington, D.C., and I was in Hays doing my student teaching. The financial struggle of having to pay tuition and bills, and finding a way to feed ourselves, was tough.”
Less than a year out of college, Thompson and Tormey set up the fund to provide assistance to FHSU students who may face the choice of putting food on the table or taking an internship giving them a shot at their dream job.
“With the World Ready Fund we want to promote the direct relationship between internships, student teaching and a great job offer,” said Tyler. “For us, internships provided the experience of a lifetime.”
“I owe so much to the faculty and staff at FHSU,” Tormey said. “They helped shape me into the young woman that I am today. It’s the dedication and commitment of the faculty and staff that make the difference for FHSU students.”
While attending FHSU, Thompson served two terms as SGA president, chair of the Student Advisory Committee for the Kansas Board of Regents and served on the Executive Committee of the National Campus Leadership Council. He was also selected as a Newman Civic Fellow, which identifies student leaders working to find solutions for challenges facing their communities.
Tormey was an involved student as well landing the Dean’s Honor Roll while serving as a student senator, was chair of the SGA Allocations Committee and the national vice president of DECA, an international association of marketing students and recognized as FHSU’s Torch Award winner for 2013 as the university’s outstanding senior.
The couple made an impact at FHSU throughout their years, and in January 2013, they started talking about giving back.
“I had just completed an internship in Senator Moran’s office in Washington, D.C.,” Thompson said. “Before that, I had an internship at Intouch Solutions in Overland Park, and Jessica had just finished student teaching. It had been an incredibly challenging six months for both of us. The experience showed us that there was an urgent need for students to have a more responsive funding model than the normal scholarship process. Internships and student teaching both come with extremely high expenses and very little, if any, income. We talked about ways to help out others who would be in our situation in the future and decided to approach the FHSU Foundation about ways to make it happen.”