Sanford Health’s Equity in Education scholarship gives people a second chance

It awards five thousand dollars to help students that are sometimes overlooked.

FARGO, N.D. (KVRR) – Last year Sanford Health started the Equity in Education Scholarship.

It awards $5,000 to help students that are sometimes overlooked.

A selection committee picked by the Sanford Health Office of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion reviews the applicants and the essays they send in to qualify, they also have to be a full-time student and have a 3.0 GPA. Last year five winners were chosen.

“We wanted to insure that we were investing in you know underrepresented populations in higher education,” Sanford Health Head of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Natasha Smith said.

One winner was Tina Hoff who was struggling to pay her tuition. She didn’t want to add debt by furthering her education. She didn’t think she would get the scholarship initially.

“I started to cry and it ended up coming at the perfect time. My financial aid actually almost every semester gets readjusted and at some points gets taken away,” Sanford Health Clinical Care Leader Integrative Medicine Tina Hoff said.

“Tina there in the Fargo market has just done an extraordinary job of overcoming some of those barriers that existed for her. She is a full-time student. She’s working full-time. She’s a mother to children. She’s taking care of her family,” Smith said.

“It is a lot harder being a non-traditional student for sure. You know, my children are ages nine and 13 and so they have things that are going on in their lives they want to be a part of, and so having that balance between work life has been a struggle. But knowing that I’m able to get there and have that support from my home has been incredible,” Hoff said.

On top of all that she’s also a cancer survivor. After one of Hoff’s children was born eight weeks premature, she made a decision that she wanted to help the people that helped her.

“Nurses and the people in the medical field are really the people that bring everything together and so I made that decision to go back to school,” Hoff said.

At Sanford Health she shares her passion of Ayurveda. It’s a sister science of yoga. The goal of this practice is to help people disconnect from outside problems and focus on being positive spiritually, physically and mentally.