York member wins $2,500 WIRE scholarship

Back when Pat­ti Hansen was in high school, her guid­ance coun­selor told her she was­n’t “col­lege mate­r­i­al.” Now, the moth­er of three and York Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive mem­ber is main­tain­ing a 4.0 GPA and is on track to earn an asso­ci­ate’s degree in busi­ness man­age­ment from York Tech­ni­cal Col­lege. In fact, Hansen recent­ly earned one of two $2,500 Jen­ny Bal­lard Oppor­tu­ni­ty Schol­ar­ships award­ed by Women Involved in Rur­al Elec­tri­fi­ca­tion (WIRE), a com­mu­ni­ty out­reach group asso­ci­at­ed with elec­tric co-ops in South Car­oli­na.

WIRE awards Bal­lard Schol­ar­ships each year to women who want to con­tin­ue their edu­ca­tion. Recip­i­ents are often moth­ers like Hansen, who have been busy rais­ing fam­i­lies for years.

“That’s a fan­tas­tic oppor­tu­ni­ty they offer,” says Hansen, a moth­er of three who leads by exam­ple. “I want­ed to be a role mod­el for my teenage daugh­ters and to empow­er myself,” she says.

These days, the Fort Mill res­i­dent can offer her youngest daugh­ter, 15, more pos­i­tive guid­ance than she received in high school. And it’s pay­ing off.

“She has writ­ten me some notes, send­ing me things, and say­ing how much she appre­ci­ates me. She sees that I put into all this extra effort,” Hansen says.

Her mid­dle daugh­ter, 17, is con­sid­er­ing which col­lege to attend. And her son, 23, fol­lowed in his moth­er’s foot­steps by start­ing at York Tech this fall.

Hansen has set the aca­d­e­m­ic bar high: “I am car­ry­ing a heavy cred­it load in order to grad­u­ate as soon as pos­si­ble,” she says. “I stay up until mid­night study­ing and work­ing on assign­ments and jug­gle par­ent­ing, class­es, and oth­er respon­si­bil­i­ties dur­ing the day.”

Hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly worked in an office, Hansen plans to seek a job in human resources. She orig­i­nal­ly sought a degree relat­ed to the med­ical field. Hansen even took an anato­my class at York Tech before real­iz­ing a med­ical degree would take longer and cost more.

Many stu­dents drop out of anato­my, but Hansen was deter­mined: “I said, ‘I’m still going to get an A in this class even if I’m not going to con­tin­ue in this field!’ ” She earned the A, too.

“Math was my biggest fear,” adds Hansen, who faced her fears, tak­ing quan­ti­ta­tive math and sta­tis­tics. “Now,” she notes, “I’m being asked by the instruc­tor of sta­tis­tics if I will lead a class, doing stu­dent-led sup­ple­men­tal instruc­tion.”

Talk about a con­fi­dence boost­er! “Absolute­ly,” she says. “It made a big dif­fer­ence.”

So was win­ning the WIRE schol­ar­ship, says Hansen. “That’s a huge chunk for me!”
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Schol­ar­ships