“Because I value the time I spent in the College of Engineering and felt blessed to attend the University of Oklahoma, I want to help other engineering students as they pursue their degree. Reading these letters of appreciation make me proud to play a small role in that success.”
-T. Merl Hysinger
Sooners on Scholarships is an annual workshop that is hosted by the Gallogly College of Engineering to help our students write thank you letters to our generous donors. This workshop provides an opportunity for students who have received a scholarship from our college to write thank you letters to our donors and have those letters edited by our staff.
If you have received a Gallogly College of Engineering scholarship or an engineering department scholarship, you are required to participate in the Sooners on Scholarships workshop.
Details for each phase are listed below.
Students will submit their draft to the Sooners on Scholarship Letter Draft Qualtrics Form no later than Friday, August 25 at 11:59 pm.
Once submitted, you will need to await further guidance from coescholarships@ou.edu.
Once your letter is submitted, our editors will read your letters and correct minor grammatical, spelling, and formating errors.
September 23 - September 26
Students will attend one of the Sooners on Scholarship Writing Workshop days. These are come-and-go events where students will handwrite their letter on a provided postcard and receive further editing if needed. The process will work as follows:
This workshop has a virtual and in-person component. Students will need to submit their letter drafts for Sooners on Scholarship by Friday, August 23 at 11:59pm.
The in-person component will be a come-and-go event hosted in the Engineering Quad. The times and days for these sessions is not yet finalized. Please check your email in the Fall for dates and times.
If you received a scholarship from the Gallogly College of Engineering or one of its academic departments, you will receive an offer letter detailing the requirements of your scholarship and a link the Letter Draft Qualtrics Form. If for some reason, you do not receive an email, but you still received an engineering scholarship, you are still expected to attend the workshop.
If you received a non-engineering scholarship, you do not need to attend this workshop, but you might need to fulfill another requirement outside of this workshop. You should contact the appropriate organization or department for more information.
All students that receive an engineering scholarship are required by the college to write thank you letters to our donors. If you fail to do this, you will lose your spring disbursement(s) from your scholarship.
If you are suffering from an emergency or otherwise needs accommodations, we ask that you email us at coescholarships@ou.edu.
If you are studying abroad or at a co-op, please email coescholarships@ou.edu to request an accommodation.
Given the letter length and virtual nature of Step 1, all students are required to submit a letter draft by the due date (Friday, August 23 at 11:59pm).
Information about the status of your letter drafts will be sent to your via email. Please check regularly for emails from our team.
If for some reason you do not receive an email by Mid- September, you should email coescholarships@ou.edu.
No. All writing workshop sessions are come and go with students scheduling a time slot they plan to come to the workshop. All students are required to complete their postcard during their scheduled time at the workshop area.
There is no template for your letter, however we do ask all students to keep the following in mind when writing their letter drafts:
You can use the same draft for all scholarship awards, however all students are welcome to customize each letter as they deem appropriate.
Please double check that your handwritten postcards have the correct scholarship name and recipient before submitting them if using the same draft for each letter.
You will not need to submit a photo with your thank you letter.
If you have received multiple scholarships, you may be required to write multiple thank you letters. This happens if your awards come from different funds or if your specific award has multiple donors responsible for the fund. Your workshop emai in the Falll should include the name of each scholarship you are receiving.
If you think that you are missing an award in that email, you should contact coescholarships@ou.edu.
Even if you are an excellent writer, we require all students to go through the entire workshop and submit their draft to editing by the deadline. It never hurts to have a fresh pair of eyes read your draft, give constructive feedback, and help improve your letter.
If you have any questions or need any accommodations, please contact our team at coescholarships@ou.edu.
