Local Audubon Increases Funding For Scholarship Program
In 2016, the Mendocino Coast Audubon Society entered into an agreement with the Community Foundation of Mendocino County to sustain and grow a substantial, unanticipated bequest to the Society. Earnings now support MCAS scholarships for science students at Mendocino College as well as environmental and animal welfare programs that speak to the MCAS mission. Here is the backstory of how this donation turned into an investment in the education of local community college students. MCAS and the Community Foundation of Mendocino County are 501(c)(3)non-profit organizations.
Huldie Clark’s bequest to the Mendocino Coast Audubon Society gave us a golden opportunity to pay it forward. Yet we know little about her. We know she had an appreciation for water fowl and for the coastal environment, so we seek to remember her as she remembered us at the end of her life. She died on July 26, 2013.
According to the 1965 Berkeley High School Yearbook, Huldie Schoener was active in clubs and student government. She was a member of the Science Club and the Spanish Club, and her scholastic interests included English, languages, history, mathematics and science.
Here is what we know: Hulda Ruth Schoener was born November 7, 1947 in Alameda County. She graduated from Berkeley High School in 1965 and was married in 1972 at her parents’ Berkeley home. The Oakland Tribune announcement said the bride wore an amethyst organza gown with shirred sleeves and waist, accented by her mother’s antique necklace with amethysts and a pearl pendant. Her “crown” was made of purple orchids.
Her father, a graduate of University of California Berkeley School of Law, was a Bay Area attorney at Myron Harris Law Offices. Henry L. Lutz, her maternal grandfather, was a professor emeritus at UC Berkeley. He was a professor of Egyptology, Assyriology and Semitics for more than 40 years, including work as a visiting professor of the School of Oriental Research in Bagdad from 1929-1930.
Huldie attended UC Berkeley, too. After earning an advanced degree in design, she was associated with Teapot on the Roof, a Berkeley ceramics studio that was part of an avant-garde counter cultural artist movement in the 1970s. It is not particularly remarkable she was identified in 1986 in public records as a correctional officer at San Quentin Prison. Hers was a generation of social unrest and political upheaval, and radical prison reform initiated as early as l977 saw the creation of Prison Arts Project that included ceramics and fine arts programs for inmates. Reforms required diversity and nondiscrimination in hiring of correctional officers. She retired from the department at age 50 and settled in Gualala where she became part of the art and cultural activities.
After her estate was settled, funds bequeathed to the Mendocino Coast Audubon Society and approved by the MCAS Board of Directors began to make a significant difference to MCAS scholarship recipients.
MCAS scholarships to local community college students began in 2004 with a $1,000 award to Angela Forgery, a science student at the Fort Bragg campus of College of the Redwoods, headquartered in Eureka. By 2017, the local community college affiliation changed to Mendocino College, headquartered in Ukiah, serving Mendocino and Lake Counties. The amount of scholarship awards typically was $500 or $1,000 until 2021 when Huldie Clark funds as well as donations from Audubon members and members of the community increased the amounts of awards.
Between 2004 and 2025, a total of $37,200 was made available to 22 community college science students and one high school graduate.
Last summer, the MCAS Board of Directors approved a budget that includes $8,000 for two 2026 scholarships.
“We started our Board planning meeting with a discussion of what we would like to do with the money that has accrued from the Huldie Schoener Clark bequest and subsequent investments,” MCAS President Tim Bray said.
“Everyone agreed we needed to increase our level of support for students. The costs of education are so high that our previous scholarship levels, while appreciated by the recipients, probably weren’t making a significant difference in their ability to complete a degree program. Our goal is to make it easier for students to pursue their goals, and we have the money, so we took the decision to double the level of support. We also recognize that our membership is aligned with this goal, as they have been contributing to the scholarship fund as well,” he said.
Much of Hulda Schoener Clark’s story remains untold, but it’s a story that gets better every year with the number of students that are touched by her generosity.
Mendocino Coast Audubon Society supports funding for two annual natural science scholarships at Medocino College in cooperation with the Mendocino College Foundation and the Mendocino College Coastal Field Station. Scholarship recipients are selected by science faculty staff based on academic achievement, financial need, and participation in laboratory research at the college Field Station near Point Arena:
https//www.mendocino.edu/about/mlccd/our-campus/mendocino-college-coastal-field-station
Donations for the 2026 scholarships can be made to the MCAS Brandon Pill Memorial Scholarship Fund and/or the MCAS Professor Greg Grantham Memorial Scholarship Fund. Brandon Pill graduated from College of the Redwoods in 2013. Professor Greg Grantham, who developed the Marine Science Technology Program on the Fort Bragg campus of the College of the Redwoods, taught at the school from 1984-2012. Please contact MCAS Scholarship Chair Judy Steele for more information: judys@mcn.org
