Stevens announced as 2020 recipient of Merl Fair Allen Memorial Scholarship

Summer Stevens, a graduate of Rowan County Senior High School, has been named the 2020 recipient of the Merl Fair Allen Memorial Scholarship, a fund to benefit Morehead State University students.  

“I want to greatly thank everyone who helped provide this scholarship to me,” Stevens said. “Not only is it going to make college easier, but the Merl Fair Allen Memorial Scholarship will fuel my education in becoming whatever I want to be. I’m very appreciative of this opportunity and will put it to great use.”  

The scholarship’s namesake is the late Merl Fair Allen (48) of Morehead, who passed away in 2017 at the age of 89. Allen was a 1944 graduate of Breckinridge Training School. She later graduated from then-named Morehead College in 1948 with a bachelor’s degree in home economics. She also received a master’s degree and Rank I certification from MSU. As a student at Breck, Allen met her husband, the late John “Sonny” Allen (50). Sonny was a legendary baseball and basketball player at Morehead State and later became a long-time MSU baseball coach (John Sonny Allen Field on campus was named in his honor).   

Allen taught high school home economics for 30 years. She served 32 years on the Board of Directors of the MSU Alumni Association, including a two-year term as president. She followed that with two decades as secretary and member of the Board of Trustees of the MSU Foundation. Allen volunteered for half a century at MSU and was later nominated to the University’s Alumni Hall of Fame and named the 2003 recipient of the Founder’s Award for University Service.   

The Merl Fair Allen Scholarship was created by Allen’s children Dwayne Edward Allen (84), Janie Allen Holbrook, Susan Jeanette Allen Chin (77) and Patricia Allen James (79). Scholarship criteria include recipients being incoming freshmen who are graduates of Rowan County Senior High School with a minimum high school GPA of 3.0.  

Students interested in applying to this scholarship, along with other privately funded scholarships managed by the MSU Foundation, should visit the online scholarship application at moreheadstate.awardspring.com.      

For more information on this scholarship, or to establish your own, contact MSU’s Office of Alumni Relations and Development at 606-783-2033, email giving@moreheadstate.edu or visit alumni.moreheadstate.edu.