Viola Sastavickas Scholarship Awarded to Jyotika Tandan

Joseph and Viola Sastavickas and their children used the library for many years. In the recent years before Viola’s death, they received service in their home from the Outreach Department of the library. When Mrs. Sastavickas passed away in 2006, her children made a generous donation to the library to endow a perpetual $500 scholarship in memory of their mother. According to her daughter, Kathy Sastavickas, the scholarship is “a fitting tribute to our beautiful mother and to the library and staff which treated her with great respect and affection.” Over recent years the Sastavickas family has made additional donations to the Sastavickas Scholarship Fund to ensure that the scholarship would be given to a deserving recipient. This year marks ten years of the annual scholarship award.
This year a committee reviewed the applications submitted and selected Jyotika Tandan to receive the Viola Sastavickas Scholarship. The committee included the 2016-2017 Chairman of the Morrill Memorial Library Board of Trustees, Susan Pipes; the president of the Staff Association, Allison Palmgren, and Library Director, Charlotte Canelli. Jyotika began working as an enthusiastic volunteer in the Children’s Room in 2015 and was selected to become a library page in 2016. She graduated from Norwood High School in June. Jyotika and her family moved from Nepal to the United States at the beginning of her freshman year and she will now pursue a degree in biology at Simmons College, in Boston, with aspirations to become a healthcare professional.
Jyotika is pictured with Allison Palmgren, Technology Librarian and President of AFSCME Local 1451 (Library); Susan Pipes, Chair of the Board of Morrill Memorial Library Trustees; and Jeffrey Hartman, Supervisor of the Paging Staff.