Above: Bill Ogletree, director of the communications and disorders program at WCU, watches as alumna Margie Gibbs Motsinger, founder of a Greensboro-based clinic, (center) presents a $1,500 scholarship to Susan Foringer-Burk

 A Candler woman is the first recipient of a new $1,500 scholarship for graduate students studying communication sciences and disorders at Western Carolina University awarded through a fund established by the founder of a Greensboro-based communication and rehabilitative therapy clinic.

Margie Gibbs Motsinger, a Western alumna and founder of the Cheshire Center Inc., recently presented the inaugural Cheshire Center Scholarship to Susan Foringer-Burk, who is working toward a master’s degree in communication sciences and disorders at WCU.

Motsinger, who graduated from WCU in 1975 with a degree in speech and hearing, founded the Cheshire Center in 1980. It is now the largest private clinic in the Greensboro area, with a staff of more than 90 professionals providing speech therapy and community-based rehabilitative services, primarily to children.

“I have always told everyone about what a great start I got at Western, where I experienced a lot of one-on-one interaction with my professors and where I served in many different internship-type experiences,” she said. “I remember being assigned a clinic caseload as a junior, which was frightening at the time but of tremendous value in the long-run. It certainly taught me to ‘think on my feet’ and gave me an edge when I attended graduate school.”

Motsinger said it was personally important to be able to give back to the university where she got her start in her career. “I have certainly been mentored and helped along the way by leaders in the profession and in business. It is critical that we reach out to young clinicians and foster their training and development,” she said. “I felt that setting up the scholarship program would be a way to both say ‘thank you’ to WCU and to mentor therapists early in their careers.”

Foringer-Burk, recipient of the scholarship, is a native of Syracuse, N.Y., who graduated from Hobart and William Smith College with a degree in French language and literature in 1996. The daughter of Dean and Jane Foringer of Brevard, she is married to Christopher Burk and has a son, Hunter, 11. On schedule to earn her master’s degree from WCU in December, she plans to work in the field of communication sciences and disorders for several years, and then pursue her doctorate.

The contributions from Motsinger initiating the Cheshire Center Scholarship Fund come as Western is in the midst of The Campaign for Western, a three-year effort to raise $40 million in private support for scholarships, professorships and programmatic resources. The first comprehensive fundraising campaign in university history was officially launched in February after an initial “silent phase.”

“The Campaign for Western provides the opportunity for people who see a need in a discipline near and dear to their hearts to make gifts that will have a significant impact on the students who will one day be working in those professions,” said Brett Woods, WCU director of development. “The generous support of Margie Gibbs Motsinger and the Cheshire Center will make it possible for deserving students to successfully achieve their goals of helping others cope with communication disorders.”

For information on The Campaign for Western, visit the Web site at campaign.wcu.edu or call (828) 227-7124.