Today, on the first anniversary of Gerrie’s passing, the piano scholarship that will bear her name reached the $25,000 threshold to become a perpetual award. I mailed a check for the final $412.50 to the MSU Foundation last week and post-dated it to March 4th, 2024, so that the fund’s passage to fully-endowed status would […]

As of 11/22/23, we’ve raised $22,250, leaving only $2,750 to go to reach the full endowment minimum. I mailed written thank you notes to all donors earlier this week, but let me take advantage of Thanksgiving weekend to reiterate how very grateful I am for the tremendous generosity that has put us within 11% of […]

On the eve of the memorial service that will celebrate the life and career of Gerrie Collins, the piano scholarship corpus now stands at a whopping $21,000. When I set the goal of October 15th to meet the minimum endowment requirement of $25,000, I did so without any real expectation that it would or could […]

The fund drive for the Gerrie Collins Endowed Piano Scholarship at MSU has enjoyed an incredible start. As of 8/25/23, we’ve raised $17,550. In other words, in less than two months, we are just over 70% of the way to the $25,000 endowment goal! Because I’m devoting every waking hour to the film I’m doing […]

When you choose to post a blog article (as an alternative to posting a comment in the Guestbook), your post will appear on the Blog Notes page and in the rotation of posts shown in the footer throughout the site. You’ll also enjoy a dedicated, distraction-free edit window and the option to upload your own […]

If you would like to support the Gerrie Collins Endowed Piano Scholarship at MSU, first of all, thank you so much! Second, help us keep track of the donations so that we can regularly update the progress. For compelling reasons, I elected not to coordinate this effort through a crowd-funding platform. So all donations should […]

If you visit the MSU Foundation website, you’ll notice there is no drop-down menu or other immediate way of selecting the Gerrie Collins Endowed Piano Scholarship as the destination for your donation. At the top of the form, you will see an option called “Other,” which is what you should click. The section after that […]

The Gerrie Collins Endowed Piano Scholarship will honor Dr. Collins’ distinguished career as a piano professor at Mississippi State University. To become a self-sufficient, perpetual award, the corpus must reach at least $25,000, and our goal is to meet or exceed that threshold by the October 15th memorial service (which is also Gerrie’s birthday) so […]