The Cogan Scholarship-Internship was created by the Cogan family to honor the memory of Sara Glasgow Cogan and to perpetuate the values that she held dear. Sara graduated from Lincoln High School and went on to Mills College in Oakland California. She earned masters degrees from the University of California, Berkeley and PSU. During her time in the Bay Area, she published three historical bibliographies on California immigrant Jewish history. She was a community leader in Portland, doing important work in the non-profit sector, advocating for the needy and marginalized (including serving as Multnomah County Refugee Coordinator in the 1980s), and devoting particular energies to Cedar Sinai Park, Portland’s Jewish community elder care facility, where she served as board president from 2002 to the time of her death, and the Jewish Historical Society of Oregon (now the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education). The internship that bears her name enables Judaic Studies students to carry on her legacy as they contribute to the important work being done at Jewish community organizations such as OJMCHE.
Professor Nathan Cogan, a driving force behind the formation of the scholarship, taught in the English Department at Portland State University from 1976 to 2001 and developed a course on the literature of the Holocaust, which he taught until 2002. Professor Cogan, who also founded PSU's Holocaust and Genocide Studies Project, hopes to increase awareness about the Holocaust and other forms of genocide at the college and secondary school levels.