Cathy Kramer was an influential teacher and mentor in Muscatine, Iowa. She felt the role as a teacher was first one of nurturing space for acceptance and support. Without those things, she saw it was impossible to be engaged in high school science. She especially cared for students who struggled the most with school, whose personal challenges went unnoticed, and students who seemed to have everything working against them. She also equally loved teaching her fellow teachers and had a special place in her heart for each student teacher she worked with. She had a tremendous impact on her community.

Cathy passed away on December 26th, 2022 from an aggressive type of cancer called uterine carcinosarcoma. Fellow teachers and loved ones have been moved by this sudden loss to create a scholarship in her memory to continue uplifting disadvantaged and struggling students. These donations will enable us to establish an endowment that will keep this scholarship sustainable year after year through the Community Foundation of Muscatine.

Mission:

It is the mission of the Catherine M. Kramer Memorial Scholarship Foundation to sustain a legacy of support, learning, social advancement and the removal of barriers for graduating high school students, who have experienced and overcome challenges throughout their school-age years. Our goal and motivation is to seek and award scholarships for years to come upon motivated, intentional, and future-focused students who:

This mission is galvanized by Cathy’s many years of service as a teacher, dedicated to meeting the needs of students who were often–due to circumstances and historic cycles out of their control–among the first to not seriously consider long-term career, post-secondary vocational and/or professional educational programs and plans, sometimes solely for their assumption that these goals were simply “out of reach” for them. Cathy saw this as a direct challenge to everything she stood for as a public educator, and she went above and beyond to see student after student through to their own personal finish line of a high school diploma, a post-high school plan, and beyond. She had not only a genuine gift for seeing the high potential and promise in each and every student and their future, but a matched ability to nurture it, and bring it to fruition–through the ongoing investment of patience, time, effort, presence, humor, and love. Through these unique, individual, and caring relationships she fortified over the years, countless lives have already been touched, and changed. For this and so many other reasons, it is this foundation’s wish to carry on this tradition in her honor for many years to come.