Campus News

Scholarships can make a big difference in students' lives; just ask hygiene student Laney Simonson

Laney Simonson plans to graduate from Great Falls College's Dental Hygiene program without any debt thanks to a mixture of scholarships, planning and hard work.

Great Falls College dental hygiene student Laney Simonson has a simple plan: Take as much help as she can.

And the second-year dental hygiene student is executing the plan.

“I kind of based my school on getting as much help as I can,” she said.

Simonson received $5,100 in scholarships for the two-year program. She was one of 177 Great Falls College students to receive a total of $416,597.50 in scholarships last school year. The scholarship funds the students receive came from a variety of sources, including Great Falls College, generous donors and numerous other sources.

“We are really pleased to be able to offer our students this support,” said Dr. Stephanie Erdmann, CEO and dean of Great Falls College. “We know scholarships can make a big difference to our students and their families. Some probably wouldn’t be able to afford school if it were not for the scholarships they receive.”

Simonson is certainly grateful for the support she has received along the way.  

“I try to take advantage of people that want to help out,” she said, with a shrug, as if to say, who wouldn’t?

In truth, Simonson’s preparation began a lot earlier than when she got to Great Falls College.

The 2023 Flathead High graduate got all her prerequisite courses for the dental hygiene program paid for while attending Flathead Valley Community College with its Running Start program while she was in high school.

“I got pretty lucky there,” she said.   

Of course, it wasn’t luck. Simonson is a planner.

She was weighing whether to follow her mom’s footsteps and become a nurse or whether she wanted to pursue dental hygiene.

Simonson decided on hygiene – “I really liked the schedule,” she explained. “The family-work lifestyle of hygiene. It’s also kind of a smaller community that you are working with as opposed to a hospital, so I liked that. And I’ll get to know my patients better. More personable, I guess” – and started taking the prerequisite courses the summer of her sophomore year in high school.

She was the only member of her dental hygiene class to enter the program at Great Falls College directly out of high school.  

“Laney is a great story,” said Rachael Bruce, Dental Hygiene program director. “She is an example of what you can do if you plan ahead and take advantage of the opportunities that are out there.”

Simonson said she had good school counselors in high school in Kalispell, so she knew how to find scholarships.

“They really pushed scholarships and how to find them,” she said. “I talked with financial aid here, too, and they helped me.”

Even though she secured the scholarships, Simonson still worked five nights a week her first year at Great Falls College, which is not something that is necessarily advised in the academically rigorous program. 

Her employer, FedEx, even paid the tuition for her spring and summer semesters last year.

“I tried holding a job the first year (of dental hygiene school), and it was OK, but the program is so demanding it’s difficult to try to work and balance school, which is more important to me right now,” she said, explaining that she is not working this year.

Still, Simonson, who already is getting dental offices reaching out to her about working for them, said she will graduate in May without any student loan debt.

General scholarship applications are open now for the 2025-2026 school year. Go to www.gfcmsu.edu/finaid for more information.