Ernest and Helen Hilton Scholarship Fund

Wyoming natives, Ernest Hilton and Helen Howard Hilton, both attended the University of Wyoming. Ernest received his bachelor’s and master’s degree from the University of Wyoming, and a doctorate in Education from the New York University. He began a 58 year career in education, teaching in a “one-room” country school in Saratoga, Wyoming at age 17 and retired as Chairman of the Board of Trustees at Community College of the Finger Lakes in Canandaigua, New York at the age of 75. Before joining the State University of New York, Fredonia Faculty, he was a school principal at Cheyenne and an Assistant Professor of Education at the University of Wyoming. His doctoral dissertation on “Rural School Management” became a prominent textbook in colleges and universities, and a reference for rural school principals and administrators. He served as Vice President and Editor-in-Chief of the school department at World Book Publishing Company, as well as the Senior Vice President and Editor-in-Chief of Harcourt Brace Publishing Company. Because of his devoted work in the Education field, Ernest was honored with the Distinguished Alumnus Award by the University of Wyoming in 1973.

Helen started at the University of Wyoming in the autumn of 1934, at age nineteen, majoring in elementary education. She excelled in her studies and was inducted into the university’s honor society (the Phi Beta Kappa chapter at the University wasn’t established until 1940) as well as the Pi Beta Phi sorority. Upon her graduation, she taught kindergarten in Cheyenne, WY. She and Ernest had three sons.