The Dr. A. Barbara Pilon Endowed Scholarship

Criteria: (Amount Equal to One $2500.00 Award) The Dr. A. Barbara Pilon Endowed Scholarship will be awarded to a student majoring in English. The applicant must have a grade point average of 3.0 or higher and have expressed an interest in becoming an English teacher. An essay should accompany the scholarship application addressed to the chairperson of the Languages and Literature Department stating his/her goals.

The late Dr. A. Barbara Pilon, professor emerita, author, and poet, was born in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1934. She earned a bachelor of science degree from Pembroke College of Brown University, a Master in Education from Rhode Island College, and a Ph.D. from Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.

For a number of years, Dr. Pilon was an elementary school teacher and reading consultant in Rhode Island. She was a professor of reading at Indiana University/Purdue University for two years. She began her tenure at Worcester State University in the Education Department and was later recruited to the Department of Languages and Literature. She retired after twenty-two years of dedicated service at Worcester State University as an English professor. For over fifteen years she presented a session on poetry and language arts for the gifted at the University of Connecticut Confratute summer sessions. She also established a Gifted Child program at Worcester State and directed it for several years.

Dr. Pilon was an author and college lecturer. Her published works include: Teaching Language Arts Creatively in the Elementary Grades and Concrete Is Not Always Hard. She also wrote for numerous professional journals. At the time of her death, she was actively involved in marketing eleven manuscripts on poetry and word play and had recently engaged a literary agent.

For twenty-five years, Dr. Pilon was on home hemodialysis as a result of kidney failure. During this period, she worked a full schedule—teaching, writing, and speaking at educational forums throughout the United States.

Dr. Pilon was a delight and an inspiration to all who knew her. Those who worked with her at Worcester State University remember a tiny, quick-moving woman with pale, sparkling blue eyes and a joke or a kind word for everyone. Energetic and effervescent, she brought a spirit of creativity and joy to everything she did. Although her doctorate was in education, she was recruited from the Education Department by the chair of the Languages and Literature Department because of her love of literature and her value as a colleague. It was a good move for Languages and Literature; years after her retirement she is still remembered fondly for her generosity of spirit and her zest for life.

In spite of her chronic ill health, her life was a celebration of creativity and laughter. As a teacher, she shared her love of imaginative literature with her students. Whether she was getting a tough fourth grader to open up to the magic of Cinderella in her early days as a teacher of gifted children or getting a college audience to see the drama of Greek myths as professor of English at Worcester State University, she was opening her students’ minds to new ways of thinking, feeling and imagining. When her retirement gave her time to write, she reveled in the chance to create her own poems, children’s riddles, and word games.

Her love of learning, her empathy for her students, and her generosity are continued in this scholarship that bears her name.