Scholarships

• Currently enrolled undergraduate, graduate, or professional student at UM-Ann Arbor for winter 2024 and fall 2024.
• Documented leadership of, support for, or involvement in organizations, activities, or issues that benefit the LGBTQIA2S+ communities

To donate to the Jack Huizenga Scholarship, add it to your Leaders & Best online giving cart.

Jack Huizenga was full of wisdom and always so humble, sharing stories from a life lived to its fullest. Jack served as a friend to the Spectrum Center over many years, deciding in 2015 that he wanted to formalize a bequest for student scholarships. Jack provided sound guidance and perspective during times of celebration as well as trial and tribulation. The day after the 2016 shooting at Pulse Nightclub in Orlando Florida—close to his home in Fort Lauderdale, Jack reached out and shared his own experience in 1999 when working at a gay bar in London that was bombed, resulting in the death of three people and the injury of many. Jack started his email by saying “I have been here before.” He wanted to remind students that their careers will take them to many places and that there are so many people out there ready to support them. Jack served as one of those supportive people, and through this scholarship, his support will continue to make an impact on the lives of students.

• Currently enrolled undergraduate UM-Ann Arbor student for winter 2024
• Documented leadership of, support for, or involvement in organizations, activities, or issues that benefit the LGBTQIA2S+ communities

Chris Kolb is the vice president for government relations at the University of Michigan. Chris Kolb has a long-standing dedication to public service and leadership. He has served as the state of Michigan’s budget director, president and CEO of the Michigan Environmental Council, and co-chair the Flint Water Advisory Task Force. He served three terms in the Michigan House of Representatives and service as an Ann Arbor City Council member and mayor pro-tem. The Spectrum Center Fund is a demonstration of his support for Spectrum Center and our communities, as well as student leaders working for change.

To donate to the Spectrum Center Fund, add it to your Leaders & Best online giving cart.

• Currently enrolled U-M student
• Engagement in at least ONE of the following:
  • Spectrum Center student staff
  • Spectrum Center Programming Board
  • Spectrum Center student volunteers
  • Spectrum Center Advisory Board
  • Student organization leaders affiliated with the Spectrum Center

To donate to the John D. Evans Scholarship, add it to your Leaders & Best online giving cart.

The Foundation was built on the pillars of advocacy and actions to AIDS and cancer research, as well as the protection of the environment through its founder, John D. Evans who graduated from University of Michigan in 1966. John now serves on the President’s Advisory Group, School of Information and College of LSA Dean’s Advisory Councils. Evans is a former U.S. Navy Lieutenant who served on two aircraft carriers, at the Pentagon and launched a Navy television system. After his Navy career, he founded the Evans Communications System and in 1972 rose to prominence as the manager of the largest operating region of what is now the Time Warner company. Evans is perhaps best known as co-founding C-SPAN in 1977 and later serving as its chairman. During his tenure, C-SPAN was the recipient of several Golden Cable ACE awards, a Peabody Award, and a Golden Beacon Award. To this day, Evans remains active on numerous network boards and executive committees. In recognition of his achievements, he received the NCTA President’s Award in 1981 and the Vanguard Award for Young Leadership in 1984. He has been inducted into the Virginia Cable Telecommunications Association Hall of Fame, the Virginia Communications Hall of Fame, and the Cable Industry Hall of Fame.

Wozencraft has spent the last 30-years of his career working with NGOs and not-for-profits to refine their fundraising practices, programmatic focuses, and strategic partnerships. He is the former President of the John O’Donnell Company, a firm established in 1966, which specialized in helping global NGOs and not-for-profit organizations achieve sustainable growth. 

Wozencraft is known for his unique ability to bring together diverse networks for a common cause across a range of issues, with a focus on HIV/AIDS treatment & prevention, criminal justice reform, Social Justice, environmental issues, technological innovation, and the arts.

Wozencraft currently serves on the boards of the Vet Voice Foundation, Atlas Corps (as Chairman of the Board), Dr. Robert Gallo’s Institute of Human Virology, the Department of State Fine Arts Committee, the University of Michigan Spectrum Center Advisory Council, The State Department Global Equality Fund and the Advisory Board of the Bretton Woods II initiative at the New America Foundation. He is a past board member of South Coast Medical Center, University of Michigan Center for Global Health External Advisory Board, GLAAD, NGLCC, Positive Young People Foundation (PYP), The Global Virus Network and Friend Factor. 

• Full-time U-M undergraduate student
• Documented leadership of, support for, or involvement in organizations, activities, or issues that benefit the lesbian, gay male, bisexual and transgender communities
• Consent to be publicly recognized as a recipient of the award 
• Preference for first-year students (all undergraduates eligible)

To donate to the Chris Armstrong Scholarship, add it to your Leaders & Best online giving cart.

Chris Armstrong has had an expansive and diverse career in philanthropic and political advocacy, foundation relations and partnership building, working for both prominent non-profits as well as the federal government. He has launched an oral history  project in partnership with the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) that produced educational videos, op-eds and other content. The project aimed to share Chris’s personal story and raise awareness of bullying prevention efforts for LGBTQ youth and foster school environments across the nation that accord respect to all students. Before taking on that project, Chris was based in Washington, D.C., where he served as the Director of Partnerships & Government Affairs for the Small Business Majority (SBM), a nonprofit dedicated to helping small businesses embrace progressive issues. As SBM’s primary liaison to the White House and Capitol Hill, Chris built out the organization’s long-term strategic engagement and advocacy plans and pitched them to relevant foundations and funders. Chris also was the Deputy Director of Strategic Partnerships at Organizing for Action, a nonprofit formed by former President Obama, where he helped advance the organization’s policy goals by developing strategic national partnerships on health care and LGBTQ equality issues. During the Obama Administration, Chris was a deputy director of the White House’s Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force, where he built a single point of access for state and local elected-officials of storm affected areas to the government’s $50-billion recovery effort. He also worked for President Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign in southeast Michigan, building the voter turnout program that carried Livingston, Monroe, and Washtenaw counties for the President.

As a 2011 graduate, Chris served as the university’s student body president and received national attention for being the first openly gay student to be elected to such a post at a major national university.  

Following his election, Chris endured an Assistant Attorney General’s homophobic campaign against him. With the support of the entire university community, Chris handled the ordeal and the attendant media attention with grace and dignity. He provided an example for LGBT youth everywhere that, in the face of bullying, things can, indeed, “get better.”