Zina (Ashby) Townley (BS, Computer Science 1987) and her husband Brent Townley endowed the Ashby-Browning Family Scholarship in Engineering to honor four generations of Zina’s family who attended UNT. The scholarship honors a family motto of “Never Stop Learning.” Zina’s employer, L3Harris, provided a generous matching gift to each gift she and her husband made as they built up the endowment fund for this scholarship.
Zina’s father Clint Ashby grew up in a farming family and did not aspire to higher education. But after an honorable discharge from the U. S. Army in the era of the Korean Conflict he was encouraged by his old high school principal to apply to North Texas State College and use his GI Bill benefits to pay for it. After earning a BS degree in Industrial Arts Education in 1961, Clint taught at several area high schools, including Decatur and Denton. In 1976 Clint earned an MS in Vocational Technical Education.
Zina’s mother / Clint’s wife, Jessie (Thomas) Ashby has a long family history at UNT. Jessie’s grandfather Thomas Alexander Browning attended North Texas State Normal College in the 1910s. Her mother Buena Browning Thomas attended North Texas State Teacher’s College in the 1920s. Three Browning uncles graduated and at least one earned a master’s degree. Among Jessie’s uncles Leslie Browning earned a BS in Education in 1934 and coached and taught at schools all over Texas. During World War II he served over 30 months overseas and saw combat action in the Italian Campaign.
Zina was a pioneer in the automation of ski resorts and has worked in information technology or software engineering most of her adult life. In 2023 when the endowment was completed she was leading a software engineering “team of teams” in the defense contracting industry. She was motivated to attend UNT and pursue a computer science degree at what was then North Texas State University by her loving and devoted father. Her sister Sherla Ashby also graduated from UNT with a degree in Hospitality Management.
The Ashby-Browning Family Scholarship in Engineering is open to all engineering students with preference given to students who graduated from either rural public high schools or Title I public high schools in North Texas, including Denton ISD, Sanger ISD, Krum ISD, Northwest ISD, Cooke County, Wise County and Montague County. If there is no qualified student meeting that preference, preference may then be given to award the scholarship as a “finishing scholarship” to a student in their final year or semester of undergraduate engineering study who has exhausted all other financial aid is at risk of dropping out due to financial need.
Deadline
March 1
Requirements
To be eligible for consideration, an applicant must meet the following criteria:
- Meet the minimum entrance and continuing academic performance standards of the university in effect at the time of any award;
- Maintain full-time enrollment as established by the university, unless the student is nearing completion of their degree program and does not need full-time enrollment;
- Enroll as a full-time undergraduate student in the College of Engineering at the university;
