East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, has created a scholarship to honor the first African American who earned a bachelor’s degree at the institution. Laura Marie Leary earned a bachelor’s degree at East Carolina University in 1966. After graduation she taught school for two years and then moved to Washington, D.C., where she was a senior accountant at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. She died in 2013.
The Laura Marie Leary Elliott Memorial Scholarship will be presented to students who are majoring in fields where minorities have traditionally been underrepresented. These include, but are not restricted to, STEM fields.
The first recipient of the scholarship is Joseph Bryant, a junior from Greensboro, who is majoring in chemistry. In future years, the scholarship will be awarded to one male and one female student.
