Carty And McMurray Receive The John Scholl Family Scholarship Award

Two Master of Business Administration (MBA) students, James Carty ’20 and Erin McMurray ’21, are the 2020 recipients of the John Scholl Family Scholarship Award. The award honors the memory of the late John S. Scholl, III, Ph.D., who served as dean of the Shenandoah University School of Business from 1985-1992. The scholarship award is given to MBA students who are at least halfway through the program and who demonstrate high scholastic achievement.

Kathleen K. Scholl, Ph.D., presented this year’s award virtually on Oct. 22, along with her nephew Raymond C. Berg Jr. ’92, in a short ceremony that included Carty; McMurray; Shenandoah University School of Business Dean Astrid Sheil, Ph.D.; and Assistant Vice President for Advancement Greeley Myers, Ed.D.

Carty moved to the Northern Shenandoah Valley in 1998 after leaving active duty in the U.S. Navy. He worked for GE Lighting in process improvement, product quality and commercial quality before moving into GE Healthcare’s consulting business. This led to work as a liaison consultant with Valley Health. He was later hired as a systems director of management engineering at Valley Health, assisting the health system on its journey to becoming a high-reliability organization.

“A few years ago, Valley Health and Shenandoah University partnered to offer a small group of Valley Health employees the opportunity to earn a graduate certificate in Business Essentials, a precursor to an MBA,” said Carty. “I had planned for many years to get an MBA, but life always seemed to get in the way. This time, however, the timing was perfect. Six months after completing the certificate program, I retired from the Navy Reserve after a combined 28 years of active and reserve duty, and immediately started MBA classes at Shenandoah on my now-unoccupied weekends. Now, exactly two years later, I plan to graduate with my MBA.” 

McMurray is a program manager II within the Enterprise Project Management Office (ePMO) at Shentel, headquartered in Edinburg, Virginia, where she has worked for 16 years. She began her career supporting wireless and cable broadband marketing before moving into her current role. McMurray is an experienced marketing professional with a demonstrated history in the telecommunications industry and a background in marketing, team leadership, cross-functional project management, coaching and mentoring, social media marketing and marketing research. She currently serves as the marketing chair of the Virginia Chapter of Women in Cable Telecommunications and is a graduate of the Half the Sky Executive Leadership for Women program for emerging women leaders. She plans to graduate in spring 2021.

I am thrilled we have a tie this year for the highest-ranking MBA students at Shenandoah. Both James and Erin are joining a group of 28 distinguished students who have received this scholarship in the past.”

Dr. Kathleen Scholl

In his remarks, Berg described why entrepreneurship was an important principle his uncle valued at the School of Business.

“What he really pushed for was the foundation of entrepreneurship, with its focus on true business principles, on managerial accounting techniques, on moral and ethical management practice, and most importantly, on the preservation of the free market,” he said. 

“In the 80s and the 90s, [entrepreneurship] was really a buzzword in the academic community, but to him, it was a lot more than that, it was a foundation for all business,” said Berg. “If you look at any company in today’s day and age — and I don’t care if it’s big, small, publicly traded, private, whatever —  all of business begins in one place. It begins with an individual who has a dream, who has a goal, who has a vision and is truly an entrepreneur. That is how they all start, and that is the foundation of all business today. As an alumnus of the business school, I think that entrepreneurial focus really shaped where I ended up as an executive and as a business owner.” 

The John Scholl Family Endowed Scholarship was established in September 1989 through the generosity of Drs. John and Kathleen Scholl, Mr. John and Mrs. Winifred Scholl, and Mrs. Judith Scholl Lee.