Catherine Garots Severin Nursing Scholarship Fund
After a long and distinguished career as a professor of journalism, Werner J. Severin of Austin, Texas, chose to establish an endowed scholarship in nursing at Goshen College to honor his late mother, Catherine Garots Severin of Trenton, N.J.
Mrs. Severin, the daughter of immigrants, was born on Sept. 4, 1907, in Trenton, N.J., and died on March 21, 2001, in Trenton. She was the wife of the Werner E. Severin, who immigrated from Germany and died in Trenton on December 17, 1965. Mrs. Severin was the mother of Werner J. Severin of Austin, Texas, and Ernest H. Severin of Hamilton, New Jersey.
No members of the Severin family have ever attended Goshen College, and none of family is affiliated with the Mennonite Church. Further, no family members have ever been nurses. However, Professor Severin said, “I wish to establish this scholarship because I believe it is the best use of this money.”
The Catherine Garots Severin Scholarship in Nursing at Goshen College will be granted to qualified and needy students of any race, religion, gender, or place of residence (including international students) for no more than eight semesters per student. Preference is to be given to students who, upon graduation, intend to serve for at least three years of their professional nursing careers in low-income areas in the United States and/or in Third World countries. Scholarship recipients will be asked, if financially able to do so in later life, to make contributions to either this scholarship fund or other scholarships at Goshen College.
Professor Severin’s connection to Goshen College has primarily been through Stuart W. Showalter, professor of communication there since 1976. Severin served as the Ph.D. adviser to Showalter while he was a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin, 1972-75. Severin also attended the inauguration of Shirley H. Showalter as the Goshen College president in 1997 and spoke in communication classes at that time.
Severin went to work in a woolen mill at age 16 and went into the U.S. Army at age 18. He spent 39 consecutive months overseas and was discharged after 45 months of service, six weeks before his 22nd birthday. Then, while working full-time, he attended school five nights a week to get courses needed for college admission. He entered college as a first-semester freshman at age 23.
With only the GI Bill and part-time jobs, Severin earned both his bachelor’s and his master’s degrees in journalism at the University of Missouri at Columbia. He recalled making the dean’s honor roll during his first year while taking heavy course loads and working. He later earned his doctorate in mass communication at the University of Wisconsin in 1967.
As a professional journalist, Severin worked as a writer, editor and photographer at a daily newspaper, a national news service and a national picture magazine. During his stint in the U.S. Army, he was a photographer in Europe for more than three years. A photograph he made of General Dwight Eisenhower in Normandy gained national recognition.
Professor Severin taught at several universities, most recently at the University of Texas at Austin, where, for 10 years, he was chair of the Graduate Studies Committee. He was also faculty advisor to Kappa Tau Alpha, the academic honor society in journalism, for 23 years. He is also a past national president of Kappa Alpha Mu, national honor society in photojournalism.
Severin is co-author with James W. Tankard Jr. of Communication Theories, Origins, Methods, Uses in the Mass Media. Various editions of the book are available in six languages, including both modern Chinese (PRC) and traditional Chinese (Taiwan), Korean, Romanian, and Turkish. This text has been adopted for the Communication Theories class at Goshen College.
In 1984 Severin was invited to the People’s Republic of China for one year as the first Fulbright professor of journalism to that country. He taught at two universities in Shanghai and was a visiting lecturer in Beijing and Nanjing. He was awarded a second Fulbright to Beijing, China, in 1989. However all Fulbrights to China were canceled in August 1989 after the Tiananmen demonstrations.
Severin has made seven trips to Asia for university lectures and for meetings with media professionals in China, India, Japan, Thailand, The Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore. He has also traveled widely in Laos and made two trips to Myanmar (Burma).
Professor Severin’s experiences around the world have enabled him to gain a deep appreciation for other cultures and the aspirations of people in less developed countries for a better life. To this end, he has established the Catherine Garots Severin Scholarship in Nursing at Goshen College.