Edna and Carl Peters Scholarship

In 1993, when John Peters received a generous inheritance from his parents, Edna and Carl Peters, he knew exactly what he wanted to do. He wanted to honor them and their lifelong dedication to the Lutheran faith by creating a scholarship in their names “to provide financial assistance to ethnic minority students and to foster cultural diversity in CLU’s student body.”

John Peters lived with his wife Sharon in Davis, California. While they were dedicated Lutherans they had not visited the CLU campus until the spring of 1994. They liked what they saw. Even though one of their three daughters had graduated from St. Olaf College in Minnesota, John felt that an institution in Southern California would more likely accomplish his goals for the scholarship than other Lutheran institutions. Within eight months and with considerable interaction with the CLU advancement office, the Edna and Carl Peters Memorial Scholarship was a reality, at least on paper.

John Peters was a person who gave a great deal of attention to detail. He was an engineer with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. So he gave a lot of care and thought to the scholarship agreement. Since the scholarship was to be in memory of his parents, Edna and Carl Peters, he provided information about them. Each parent had been the only child of German immigrant parents. They both had been born in San Francisco in 1906, and they were lifelong residents of that city. Both loved the Lord deeply and expressed it through active membership in the Lutheran Church. And both were strong advocates of Christian education.

The overall intent of the endowed Edna and Carl Peters Memorial Scholarship is to assist ethnic minority students, with preference given to American Indian and African American students. In designing the scholarship John and Sharon decided that it should be based on financial need and awarded to an incoming freshman with the possibility of renewal for three additional years, provided the recipient takes a normal course load and meets academic requirements. They set the actual award at 20 percent of the estimated annual cost of tuition and room and board. Whenever earnings from the endowment investment are sufficient, an additional recipient is to be selected. This unusual scholarship has touched the lives of many students who might not otherwise have considered CLU for college.