Promoting Education

SoCo Endows Scholarship in School of Optometry

Peggy Striplin, John Amos, SoCo president Jonathon Shrewsbury, and SoCo executive director Elizabeth Taylor

The Southern Council of Optometrists Inc. (SoCo) has established an endowed scholarship in the UAB School of Optometry, with preference given to a student from a Southeastern state. SoCo has been very supportive of the school over the years, including donating a room during the clinic renovation.

“We were privileged to receive an endowed scholarship from SoCo, an organization that conducts the premier optometric educational meeting in the world, the Southeastern Educational Congress of Optometry (SECO),” says John Amos, O.D., who recently retired as dean of the school. “This is the first organized optometric group to provide a scholarship to the school. We are proud that they are willing to fund this scholarship with promises of additional scholarships.”

Established in 1958, SoCo is a parliamentary body and legal business entity that offers continued support of the already established annual SECO meeting held every year since 1924 and provides an educational journal for the membership. The organization includes the state optometric associations of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia and the Armed Forces Optometric Society, with more than 5,500 members.

SoCo is dedicated to promoting organized optometry and education for optometrists worldwide and represents an outlet to accomplish that mission by utilizing the talents of a strong volunteer base who have provided advancement of the optometric profession. SECO, the annual educational meeting, is held in Atlanta and annually attracts practitioners from at least five countries, all 50 states, and three U.S. territories.

Maintaining the Momentum / Summer 2010