Brittany Baker, a graduate student in Mental Health Counseling, is the 2013-14 recipient of the $2,000 June S. Stillman Endowed Memorial Scholarship for library student assistants and USPS staff.
Baker, whose overall GPA is 3.976, began working as a student assistant in the copy services unit of the John C. Hitt Library in 2010. On a path that took her to Hospitality and Elementary Education, Baker then became interested in Mental Health Counseling, said Raynette Kibbee in the UCF Libraries administration office.
Baker’s love of children and desire to help others directs her interest in volunteer service, which includes being a teacher’s aide with the Seminole County Public Schools, City Life Club (working with at-risk youth in an underprivileged downtown Orlando community), and the Central Florida Wesley Foundation, where she had the opportunity to travel to India to work in a children’s home, do construction work in the Bahamas and Memphis, Tenn., and regularly help young women transitioning into college.
After receiving her Master’s degree in Mental Health Counseling, Baker plans to begin the two years of internship required to be a licensed mental health counselor in Florida. She is specializing in marriage, family and play therapy.
This scholarship was named in 1999 for June S. Stillman, one of the first librarians hired when the UCF (then Florida Technological University) library was opened in 1968. She earned her second Master’s degree in English from UCF while working as the head of Reference Services at the library, and she retired from UCF in 1996. Her friends and family established the scholarship in her honor after she was killed by an assailant at her home in 1998. She is remembered as the consummate professional, the epitome of gentility and compassion, and a true and loving friend, Kibbee said.