Mary Jansen Memorial Scholarship Fund

Our mom, Mary Jansen, committed her entire adult life to educating children. Early on, as a music teacher she took her great love of music and brought it to children in the Minnesota and later Pennsylvania school districts.  Later, she moved to Kansas where she continued to teach music eventually transitioning into a role as an elementary school counselor all while continuing to teach private piano lessons in her spare time. 

It has always been clear how much she loved and cared for her students  doing everything she could to ensure students knew they had an adult they could trust and all the support needed to succeed in school.   She knew how to connect with and motivate her students and went so far as to incorporate her golden retriever, Pickles, as a way to strengthen her relationship with the children.  Mary faced many challenging situations as a counselor and always went the extra mile to help her kids (even when that extra mile was hard to walk in those designer shoes!) 

Because counseling and educating were such a core focus of our mom's life it was an easy and obvious decision to continue supporting the children and the district she gave so much of her life to by setting up the Mary Jansen Memorial Scholarship Fund.    This scholarship will be administered by the Topeka Community Foundation and all donations through this GoFundMe page will be contributed to the scholarship fund.