Communications students at Calgary’s Mount Royal University will soon have a bit more help paying for school, thanks to the memorial fund for a slain journalist.

Amber Bowerman was a 30-year-old student who was employed at the SAIT campus newspaper.

She lived in the home of Joshua Lall, an architecture apprentice who killed his family in one of the city’s worst mass murders in 2008.

Bowerman was the first victim of the crime, stabbed to death along with Lall's wife Alison and two of his three daughters.

Only one-year-old Anna survived.

A foundation has since been set up in memory of Bowerman to provide support to emerging journalists and artists.

The scholarships at MRU will be handed out alongside endowments from SAIT.

“The foundation, the members, they are just truly amazing. They work so hard. Every time you see them, they’ve got something new they’re working on. They are just so dedicated and Amber was so fortunate to have people like them in her life. Now we are as well,” says Amber’s mother Susan Webb.

The foundation will be giving out $1,000 in perpetuity to a future leader in the journalism field.

This summer, the organization will be partnering alongside two Calgary charities, the You-Think Publication Society and the Wordsworth Creative Writing Residency, to help youth advance their writing interests and abilities.

“It has been important for us to ensure that the work the foundation does not only benefits students and future writers, but that it is reflective of who Amber was as a person,” says Kathe Lemon, President of the Amber Webb-Bowerman Memorial Foundation. “Now that we have established continuing scholarships at two Calgary post-secondary institutions we felt it was time to look for something new and fun. When we heard from both of these groups we could immediately picture Amber wanting to participate with them.”

Bowerman’s family says it’s important for people to remember how Amber live, not how she died.

The Amber Webb-Bowerman Memorial Foundation was created in 2008 and an endowment scholarship was first created at SAIT Polytechnic in the Journalism department.