At a perilous time for financing continuing education, three Harvard Extension School students are completing their degrees and certificate this spring with bright futures ahead. For Susan Bell (ALB), Frank Curtain (CSS), and Rachelle Tayag (ALM), the federal loan assistance and direct scholarship grants from the Extension School have made it possible to study full time and to deepen their knowledge in the specific field that they came to Harvard to pursue. Each of these remarkable students was nominated for financial aid by her or his program as a result of superior academic performance, and each has ambitious plans for applying new skills and credentials to promising careers--as a historian of a critical chapter in the 20th-century saga of the Middle East, as an environmental management specialist for large industries that produce chemical waste, and as a policy consultant in urban planning and economic development in East Asia.

Harvard Extension School students Rachelle Tayag, Frank Curtain, and Susan Bell.

Susan Bell, whose straight-A record in 30 courses as an undergraduate degree candidate in the Harvard Extension School is punctuated by two B+s (proving that she is human, after all), returned to school after a successful career in television production. Eager to pursue her love of Middle Eastern history, she soon discovered that the Harvard Extension School offered a wide range of courses in her field, and that Professor Nadav Safran, one of Harvard's eminent authorities on the Middle East, was ready to take her on. Bell soon discovered that one of the most enigmatic and legendary figures in Palestine, British captain Orde Wingate (1903-1944), sometimes called "the Lawrence of Arabia of the Jews," had never received a life history. Using her Extension School financial aid to take numerous writing-intensive courses and a graduate seminar in biography writing, Bell has now begun the archival search process that will lead to a proper biography of Wingate. Having nearly finished her bachelor's degree in record time, she says, "Thank you, Extension. Without the financial aid, I would have been chipping away at this for ten years!"

Last September, Frank Curtain left a secure job as an environmental consultant in Dallas, Texas to pursue his Certificate of Special Studies in Administration and Management at the Harvard Extension School. Having earned four As during the fall term, he has received one of three scholarship grants for outstanding achievement offered to certificate candidates this spring. Originally planning to return to his job and family after a year at Harvard, Curtain has found his life propelled in a new direction by his success as a student and by the "astounding quality of the faculty here." He now plans to enter a Master of Business Administration program next fall--in a city to which his wife, an American Airlines administrator, can transfer. Thanks to his scholarship, he can continue his education, having picked up a graduate certificate at Harvard in only one year. Five years from now, Curtain hopes to be back in environmental management and waste treatment--but serving a larger firm with complex needs and a highly trained professional workforce.

When the United States pulled out of the Subic Bay Naval Base and Clark Air Field in 1993, Rachelle Tayag, a native of the Philippines, became an assistant to Mr. Richard J. Gordon, the local city mayor who was appointed to oversee the conversion of these military facilities to peaceful use. Now, only three years later, the potential for great economic loss to the Philippines has been transformed, through the recruitment of 8,000 volunteers and the support of public and private agencies, to a new manufacturing center and free port that has attracted over $1 billion in international investment. Meanwhile, Tayag has documented this remarkable turnaround in her ALM thesis, under the direction of Dr. Dennis Skiotis, entitled, "How Can Subic Bay Free Port and Clark Air Field Be Models for Conversion?" Because of the financial aid she has received this year, she has been able to work full time on her thesis and begin a second master's program in city planning at MIT. In the short run, Tayag intends to return to her native country to oversee development projects throughout Asia and to put her Harvard and MIT expertise to work in the service of a bustling economic region. She has the highest praise for her instructors at Extension and for the financial assistance that enabled her to finish her advanced studies in two years--a very productive pit stop indeed.

According to Samantha Lehr, Extension School Financial Aid Officer, the success of these students highlights the importance of increased contributions to the financial aid pools that the Extension School has created and that loyal alumni and friends of Extension help to fund. With the future of many student loan and direct grant programs at the federal and state levels still in question, Bell, Curtain, and Tayag consider themselves fortunate to have attended the Harvard Extension School with the financial support that was provided.