Black Hawk College: New $250K scholarship to help future nurses

A new $250,000 endowment has been created to launch a scholarship that will help Black Hawk College students pay for their education and begin careers in nursing. That financial help will come from the new James Cobin Class of 1976 Endowed Scholarship. About 25 college leaders and family members of the late Mr. Corbin gathered […]

A new $250,000 endowment has been created to launch a scholarship that will help Black Hawk College students pay for their education and begin careers in nursing. That financial help will come from the new James Cobin Class of 1976 Endowed Scholarship.

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About 25 college leaders and family members of the late Mr. Corbin gathered in the new Health Sciences Center of Black Hawk College, Moline, on Monday morning, Nov. 20, for the scholarship announcement. “It’s (nursing) not one of the cheapest programs in the world, because of its nature. … This will make it possible for more people to pursue nursing,” Black Hawk College President Jeremy Thomas said during a brief ceremony that outlined some of the details of the scholarship program. To be eligible for the James Cobin Class of 1976 Endowed Scholarship, students must be full-time nursing students and maintain at least a 3.0 GPA. Students must demonstrate financial need. The scholarship shall be used for tuition, fees and books. (For more on the nursing program at Black Hawk, visit here.) Money from the new scholarship could start being awarded in a couple of years, and could help six or seven students per year, according to Zenaida Landeros, the executive director of the Black Hawk College Foundation. “We have a long history of providing some of the best nurses in the State of Illinois,” Mr. Thomas added during the ceremony. Much of the announcement event, though, was devoted to honoring the family that made the new scholarship program possible. The endowment was started by the late Stanley Anderberg, who created it in memory of his late husband, James Cobin. (Mr. Cobin, a 1976 graduate of Black Hawk College, worked as a nurse at the former Moline Lutheran Hospital and died in 2017. Mr. Anderberg died about a year ago, family members said.) The two men eventually had moved to St. Petersburg, Florida, where they continued to work in the healthcare field. Mr. Anderberg was a respiratory therapist. Mr. Cobin worked as a nurse on second-shift hours in an hospital emergency room for many years. “He loved it. He loved the adrenaline rush that came with it. … He loved to gross people out with his stories from the ER. … But he also loved taking care of people,” said Wendy Hilton-Morrow, the niece of the two men. Ms. Hilton-Morrow also called her uncle, Mr. Cobin, a “trailblazer,” in that he became a nurse in 1976 – a time when men made up only 3% of the profession. Shortly before his death on June 27, 2022, Ms. Hilton-Morrow said that Mr. Anderberg created two scholarship programs to help students going after careers in the health field. One program is in Florida and the other at Black Hawk College. Mr. Thomas, who became Black Hawk’s president last summer, added that gifts like this one will help keep education costs down for students, and help encourage more students to enter the nursing profession. For more information on the grants, visit the Black Hawk College Foundation website here.