GFOA's Scholarship Program: A Commitment to Advancing the Public Finance Profession.

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GFOA encourages the advancement of full--and part-time students at the undergraduate and graduate level in the fields of government finance and management and offers the following academic scholarships annually:

* Frank L. Greathouse Government Accounting

* Goldberg-Miller Public Finance

* Government Finance Professional Development

* Jeffrey L. Esser Career Development

* Minorities in Government Finance

Meet 1987 scholarship recipient Kim Edwards, managing director, public finance, at Piper Jaffray & Co.

"I started working in public finance more than 30 years ago, while I was in graduate school at the University of Texas LBJ School of Public Affairs. During my first semester, I took a public financial management class from Professor Lynn Anderson, and a few weeks into the class, I decided public finance was the career for me. GFOA and the scholarship program played a critical role for me in completing that degree, launching my career in public finance, and building a community of professional colleagues that I value every working day."

"I had an internship with the City of Austin, Texas, in 1986, and the chief finance officer at the time, Virginia Rutledge, was the GFOA president. Several GFOA of Texas members took me under their wing, inviting me to the GFOA of Texas conference and introducing me to their colleagues.

"The following year I received the Daniel Goldberg Scholarship from GFOA. I was so thrilled to attend the national conference in Memphis, Tennessee, to receive the award and go to all the sessions learning about hot topics of the times: the 1986 Tax Reform Act and a new, 'innovative' financing technique called certificates of participation (COPs). I returned to graduate school and wrote a paper on COPs and lease purchase financing, and completed my master's dissertation on the 1986 Tax Reform Act. Barbara Weiss, who was the esteemed editor of Government Finance Review, offered to publish my COP paper in Government Finance Review (but not without the benefit of her laser-like editing skills!).

"Throughout my final year in school, several GFOA staff and debt committee members, notably Cathy Spain, Lynn Hampton, and John Petersen, were invaluable in sending me articles, testimony, and other information from their efforts on the Tax Reform legislation, conducting phone interviews, and even proofing drafts of my thesis. After graduation, I eventually worked for John Petersen in GFOA's Government Finance Research Center (GFRC) in...

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