A Family Affair
  
 
 
     
  After making a gift to endow a scholarship for outstanding Shippensburg University students, Patricia McGaughey Higgins '56 visited the campus to meet the first two recipients. At that time, November 1990, Patricia's mother, Dorothy Flickinger McGaughey '29, was still alive and joined her in the visit. "It was the most wonderful thing," says Patricia. "She could point out where she and my father met at the freshman mixer and where they used to rendezvous in secret!"  
   
   
  Patricia says, "My mother was thrilled because she loved Shippensburg. I'll never forget when the University made the national playoffs. By then, Mother could hardly stand, but she got up in front of the television and sang the Shippensburg Alma Mater."  
   
  Looking back, Patricia notes, "Shippensburg University, almost from day one, was something that was talked about in our house. The college itself was always part of our lives."  
   
 
Patricia chose to honor her mother and her husband's mother with the McGaughey-Higgins Outstanding Student Scholarship to support high-achieving undergraduates majoring in elementary education. "Mother and Father were both teachers," says Patricia. "When I was 10 years old, I accompanied my mother to school whenever I could. That's when I decided to teach."
 
   
   
  She believes that Shippensburg "helped to make us excellent teachers. In fact, I wish all teachers today got that kind of grounding as they certainly do at Shippensburg. I believe that it's important that teachers learn to teach well, because the generations they affect go on forever and ever. I believe that our country is only going to be as good as the students we turn out."  
   
   
  The McGaughey-Higgins Scholarship supports two students in each class for four years. To Patricia, nothing is more important. "I'm in love with Shippensburg students. To see their faces when they graduate is the best thing to ever happen to me. You are part of their lives, and how lucky to be there."  
   
   
  More than a decade after establishing the McGaughey-Higgins Scholarship, Patricia says, "I know that, in the years since I established the Scholarship, I've gotten a lot more out of giving the money to them than they got from receiving the money from me. All of us have to give back. It's only by giving back that we stay attached."  
   
  She adds, "I want the best and the brightest students to be here and to be able to come to this University - and I want to be able to do that."