Melinda Hughes and
Craig Cosper

Since 1993, American Greetings Corporation has honored the Cleveland Arts Prize Committee by awarding scholarships to outstanding college students in the Committee’s name. The scholarships are awarded to juniors or seniors from Northeast Ohio majoring in architectural design, dance, literature, music, or the visual arts at an accredited college, institute, conservatory, or university. Two $1,000 scholarships are bestowed annually, one of which must be awarded to a visual arts student.

This year year Melinda Hughes and Craig Cosper have been chosen to receive the 2001 American Greetings/Cleveland Arts Prize Scholarships. Cleveland Scholarship Programs (CSP), a comprehensive college information and financial resource for area high school students, assisted in the selection process.

Hughes (right) is a junior at Denison University, where she is pursuing a double major in theater and dance. A 1999 graduate of Westlake High School, Hughes has been taking dance since she was four. Watching her mother volunteer at Westlake’s Clague Playhouse hooked her on theater, and she enrolled in acting classes at Lakewood’s Beck Center for the Performing Arts. Hughes appeared this past summer in the Cain Park production of The Sound of Music. With the help in part of her AG/CAP scholarship, she is spending the fall 2001 semester in London studying at the British American Drama Academy.

Craig Cosper is a 1998 graduate of St. Edwards High School. He is a senior at Ohio State University, where he is majoring in architecture. Like Hughes, Cosper comes from a single-parent family with another sibling in college. He found his way into architecture as a result of his involvement with his high school’s theater program. He discovered that he enjoyed building sets. In spring 2000 he spent a quarter with an OSU program studying architecture in Italy and was invited to stay on another month doing the same in Vienna. Cosper is a member of the American Institute of Architecture Students (AIAS) and volunteers for Habitat for Humanity, building affordable homes for disadvantaged families.