Grace Canzano, Recipient of the Club Foundation’s National Student Scholarship – the Joe Perdue Scholarship for 2023-2024

One of The Club Foundation’s top priorities is to provide support for students interested in starting a career in the club management industry. Through the Joe Perdue scholarship, The Club Foundation offers students around the nation the opportunity to apply for tuition dollars to support their hospitality studies. The scholarship is named after long-time Club Management Association of America (CMAA) professional Joe Perdue, CCM, CHE, who was an asset and powerhouse in clubs, at CMAA, and at the University of Nevada. He served on various boards throughout the industry including The Club Foundation board of governors. Most notably, he was responsible for initiating and developing CMAA’s Business Management Institute (BMI) to ensure lifelong learning and certification of club management professionals and was instrumental in supporting the development and financial support to over 40 university student chapters across the United States.

This year, ten undergraduate students seeking to build their careers in the club industry are each being awarded $5,000 for direct support of tuition and fees at their respective institutions and were selected from a highly competitive pool of applicants. The Isenberg School of Management recipient of the scholarship for the 2023-2024 academic year is Grace Canzano, a junior Hospitality and Tourism Management major from Fort Myers, Florida. Grace served as president of the UMass Student Chapter of CMAA in 2022-2023 and secretary during 2021-2022 as well as completed a full rotational internship in food and beverage at the Club at Mediterra in Naples, Florida. Grace is currently completing a full-time intensive Magic College Kingdom food and beverage internship at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida and will return to campus for the spring semester 2024 as Co-President of the UMass Student Chapter of CMAA. Grace is highly active in extracurricular activities including her membership in the UMass HTM AHLA Chapter, Isenberg Women in Business, Isenberg Global Citizens, UMass HTM Ambassador Program, and UMass University Programming Council. She has attended the last two CMAA World Conferences in San Diego and Orlando and recently completed and attended the National Student Education Conference held in November 2023 in West Palm Beach, Florida hosted by the Mirasol Country Club. She was also the recipient of the Rod Warnick Scholarship offered by New England Club Management Association and Club Foundation in 2022 and was awarded in 2023 as the most outstanding UMass club management student. 

CMAA through the Club Foundation announces its scholarships in the summer preceding the academic year and officially honors the students during its annual CMAA World Conference. This year, Grace will be honored with nine other university students at the CMAA World Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. Students who have experience and seek to enrich and begin their career in club management may find out more information at the CMAA website (www.cmaa.org) or by becoming a member of the UMass Student Chapter. For more information about the Joe Perdue Scholarship, students may visit The Club Foundation’s website application page. Applications for the 2024-2025 Joe Perdue National Student Scholarship academic year 2024-2025 are due by June 1, 2024. 

The UMass Student Chapter of CMAA is a top-performing student chapter that has secured the National Student Chapter of the Year award for top-performing clubs across the US on four previous annual competitions. The most recent Chapter of the Year award was granted to the UMass CMAA Student Chapter in 2021 at the CMAA World Conference for the 2020 academic year and has been awarded over 40 different idea fair awards in promoting concepts about the club management field. The UMass CMAA Student Chapter was formed on campus in 1978 and has consistently been one of the top five performing student club chapters in the country by its size and is supported regionally by the New England Club Management Association (NECMA), the NECMA Club Foundation, and the Student Government Association of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Students interested in the UMass Student Chapter of CMAA may contact the chapter at their email cmaa.umass@gmail.com or by visiting their Facebook page at https://ww.Facebook.com/groups/umasscmaa or Instagram page https://www.instagram.com/umasscmaa .