We often mentioned that we are a charity fund raising event. That begs the question of “who really gets the money?” We can do more than just say that it goes to some giant fund. We can actually name the individuals who have benefited from all of your charity.
In general, our funds go to the Pat Boland Memorial Internship Fund run by Penn State’s Bellisario College of Communications. The college uses the fund to aid deserving students who are interning around the country (the intern positions are often unpaid and can be a real financial burden to a student).
The Santa Crawl has become the largest annual donor to the Boland Fund. We’ve been fortunate to average around $10,000 over the last few years, bringing our total contribution to the Fund to around $60,000. Because of our, and others, efforts, the Boland Fund is fully funded and has been granting awards for the last seven years. A dozen students have now benefited from the award.
The 2019 recipients of the award were:
- Megan Ammon, from Williston, VT, majoring in Ad/PR, interned at Aribella Events in Philadelphia. This was Megan’s second Boland Award.
- Cole Majernik, from Pittsburgh, PA, majoring in Ad/PR, interned at iHeartMedia in Pittsburgh
Megan and Cole became the 11th and 12th recipients of the Boland Award. Other winners in past years were:
- 2013
- Brendan Zipfel, Telecommunications major from Harleysville; who interned at WTAJ Johnstown
- 2014
- Victoria Burdo, from Wayne, PA, 7th semester Journalism major; who interned at 97.5 The Fanatic, Philadelphia, PA
- Pier Lopez, Ardmore, PA, 6th semester Telecommunications major; who interned at MORE FM 101.1 Bala Cynwyd, PA
- 2015
- Adenike Samuel, Broadcast journalism major from the Bronx; who interned at Roc Nation, record label under Live Nation owned by Jay-Z
- 2016
- Erin Foertsch, AD/PR major from Mountain Top PA; who interned with the Wilkes Barre Scranton Railriders minor league baseball team
- Cali Wojciechowski, communications major from Allentown, who interned at the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society in Bethlehem PA
- 2017
- Megan Ammon, a sophomore communications major from Williston VT, who interned at the ECHO Leahy Center in Lake Champlain, VT.
- Alex Spinelli, a senior journalism major from Nesconset NY, who interned at Excel Sports Management in New York, NY.
- 2018
- Cheyenne Oswald, a broadcast journalism from Bensalem PA, who interned with Jenna Communications a public realations firm in Philadelphia.
- Olivia Catina, a College of Communications student from Henrietta NY, who interned locally with the State College Spikes
