Seth Ian Schimberg Memorial Scholarship

“Nothing left to do but smile, smile, smile”
- Grateful Dead Lyric from their song ‘He’s Gone’
Seth was the adventurous one. He chose to accept life as it was handed to him. Any anxieties were offset by the knowledge that whatever lay ahead, positive or negative, would inevitably allow him to grow and gain experience.
Seth was born on February 28, 1975 in Baltimore, MD where he grew up. He graduated from Randallstown High school in 1993 and chose to attend the Culinary Institute of America, one of the youngest students admitted at that time. He was wildly creative, and cooking was his way of expressing that creativity. He looked at cooking as an adventure, where every dish was a new experience and never always the same, similar to his life.
It was known at a very young age that Seth was going to be a chef. When he was 10 years old, while visiting a resort with his family in Pennsylvania, Seth disappeared. His family frantically looked everywhere for him. An hour or so later, he was found at the back of a room, watching a cooking class, surrounded by mostly older women and not another child in the room. When his mom said it was time to go, he proclaimed, “No. I want to stay so I can taste it at the end of the class.”
In addition to his love for food and cooking, Seth could make people laugh. Whether it was impersonating his bosses or shaking his hips on a Disney bus to the sounds of the blinker or embarrassing his older brother with his best man’s speech at his wedding, Seth found humor in everything.
Once Seth graduated from CIA, he began to look at life as an endless opportunity to learn. He lived in different parts of the country. He worked in a variety of restaurants, ranging from a small local lunch place in Sarasota, Florida to fishing vessels in Alaska to a high-end restaurant in Maui, Hawaii. The one constant throughout Seth’s life, from the time he was old enough to work, was his ability and drive to do just that, work. He believed in working. He worked from when he was 14 years old and always around food. It was his focus.
He began working at a country club in Baltimore Maryland, bussing and helping in the kitchen whenever possible. He continued working there through high school as a waiter and then ultimately in the kitchen. His favorite story to tell was the day they asked him to cook rice for that night’s dinner. He didn’t realize rice expands. A week later, almost every dish in the club still had rice as a side dish. But he learned and he laughed and he loved it all.
Seth would always say, “I want to be able to tell my children about all of the incredible things I’ve done.”
Seth looked at life as one long string. On that string was a series of spheres. Each sphere represented a different experience. As Seth’s life continued, a new sphere would be added to the string and give him that much more knowledge to his ever-growing recipe of life.
Ultimately, Seth made his way to Kipahulu, Maui, which at that time, was another sphere on his string of life that he so desperately wanted to stretch around the world. Unfortunately, it was there that his life was cut short in 1999. It was his last invigorating, beautiful and inspiring adventure.
The Seth Ian Schimberg Memorial Scholarship Fund has been set up to provide opportunities for young, adventurous, maybe a bit rebellious, students to attend the Culinary Institute of America. Seth’s love for cooking and willingness to take risks and do what he loved, rather than what was expected of him, is why this scholarship can be so rewarding to young budding chefs who can benefit from this fund.
We honor his name and more importantly, his approach to life, centered around food and cooking and laughing and learning.