> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://blog.rouxbe.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Cooking Is an Act of Love - URL: https://blog.rouxbe.com/cooking-is-an-act-of-love/ - Published: 2026-09-15T18:41:26.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-15T18:41:26.000Z - Author: Gary Apito Announcing the Dawn J. Thomas Memorial Scholarship If you have ever learned to cook from Rouxbe, you have heard Dawn. Maybe you did not know her name. Most students did not. But you heard her voice explaining why the pan has to be hot before the protein goes in. Why you salt in layers. Why the knife should feel like an extension of your hand, not a weapon you are wrestling. She wrote those words. She said those words. For nearly every video we ever produced, that patient, warm, funny, entirely fearless voice belonged to Dawn J. Thomas. Dawn co-founded Rouxbe with Joe Girard in 2005, back when the idea of teaching professional cooking through a screen sounded unlikely to almost everyone with money to invest. Before Rouxbe, Dawn and Joe built a mobile film catering operation that fed more than 250,000 cast and crew. It was there that they learned something that would become fundamental to Rouxbe: *Excellence at scale is not luck. It is discipline, repeated.* Dawn graduated at the top of her class at the Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts and later taught there. She spent more than 25 years in professional kitchens. She could have done anything with that experience. What she chose to do was give it away. One video. One student. One beautifully taught technique at a time. Eventually, more than a million people around the world would learn something from her. On April 18, 2026, one month after a terminal diagnosis, we lost Dawn. She was 57. There is no version of this announcement that can adequately do that loss justice. So we will say the simplest true thing instead: *Dawn believed that great culinary instruction should belong to anyone who wanted it, and she spent her life making that belief real.* Through her eyes, everything was a thing of beauty. A blistered pepper. A nervous student. A pot of beans. Today, Rouxbe is launching the Dawn J. Thomas Memorial Scholarship in her honor. --- ## Continuing What Dawn Started The scholarship reflects something Dawn cared deeply about: access. Every quarter, one recipient will receive complete, tuition-free access to the entire Rouxbe course catalog for 12 months. Not a sample. Not a discount. Everything we have made. The whole library Dawn helped build, open to one student for a full year. The scholarship includes: - 12 months of tuition-free access to the complete Rouxbe course catalog - Eligibility for applicable certification tracks recognized by the American Culinary Federation Education Foundation and WorldChefs - Access to college credit pathways where Rouxbe's academic partnerships allow - A session with a Rouxbe Student Services Advisor to create a learning plan based on the recipient's goals - A formal scholarship award letter signed by Rouxbe's CEO and the Selection Committee Chair for inclusion in the recipient's professional portfolio There is no cash component and no guaranteed job placement. What there is, is access. The thing Dawn cared about most. --- ## How to Apply The application is deliberately simple. Write us an essay. That is the entire application. Your essay should be 1,000 to 1,250 words and respond to the following prompt: **Why do you want to build a life in the culinary industry, and what do you believe food can do for the people around you?** There is: - No application fee - No prerequisite coursework - No geographic restriction - No requirement to currently be enrolled in school - No requirement for previous culinary experience Applicants must be 18 years of age or older. And then there is one other requirement: *Tell us the truth.* We are not looking for polish or AI. We are looking for a real voice, expressed honestly, the way Dawn would have wanted to hear it. --- ## How Recipients Are Selected Every essay will be read independently by each member of the Scholarship Selection Committee. The committee is chaired by Joe Girard, Rouxbe's co-founder and Dawn's partner in life and in business. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis, with four selection deadlines each year: - December 31 - March 31 - June 30 - September 30 One scholarship recipient will be selected each quarter. --- ## A Legacy That Keeps Teaching Dawn spent much of her life teaching people she would never meet. Students in professional kitchens. Students cooking at home. People changing careers. People discovering food for the first time. People thousands of miles away who simply wanted someone to show them how to do something well. That was the remarkable thing about the work Dawn helped create. A lesson recorded once could become someone's first confident knife cut years later, on the other side of the world. Her teaching continues every day. With the Dawn J. Thomas Memorial Scholarship, we hope another part of her legacy will continue too: opening the door for someone who wants to learn. Someone who wants to build a life around food. Someone with something to contribute. Someone Dawn would have wanted us to teach. She saw cooking as an act of love. So do we. --- [**Apply for the Dawn J. Thomas Memorial Scholarship**](https://rouxbe.com/scholarship?ref=blog.rouxbe.com) Send us your essay. Let's see what you have to say. *In memory of Dawn J. Thomas* *Co-Founder, Rouxbe* *1968–2026*