J. B. Speed Golden Alumni Scholarship Fund
The idea has been brought up as to how we can make a gift that is even more impactful by pooling our gifts into a Class gift that would be much larger and therefore more impactful.
Our Class gift has evolved to establishing a Scholarship Endowment and below lets you know specifically what we are doing. After feedback from the Dean and others we determined that the best use of our gift would be to provide scholarships for incoming Freshmen for recruitment and retention of students by way of an Endowment that will generate funds for years into the future.
Currently Freshmen will have academics for the first four semesters (Fall, Spring, Summer, and Fall) at Speed prior to their first Co-op. After Co-op starts the financial burden of education is somewhat alleviated and therefore our concern for recruitment and retention will focus on the first four semesters. A scholarship for this endowment per student will be for about $4,000, which will be $1,000 per semester, assuming that they meet qualification after the first two semesters at Speed. Initial eligibility will require a high school GPA of 3.5 and an ACT score of 28. After the first two semesters continuation of the scholarship will be subject to a requirement of having a 2.75 GPA or greater for the first two semesters. The reason we feel like the 2.75 GPA is appropriate is understanding how difficult the Speed curriculum is and the difficulty of maintaining a 3.5. The purpose is to focus on retention of good students that will make good engineers. During the first four semesters these students count on whatever financial assistance that they can get and in working with Admissions and their experience, we feel like this will make a positive impact on retention of good students. Our committee is anticipating that we will raise $200,000 or more from our class alone, which would generate about $8,000 per year and would provide 4 scholarships at any given time. Our class has already raised over $160,000 in pledges and cash from just 13 donors and we have many more that have said that they would like to participate.
This Endowment is now called the J. B. Speed Golden Alumni Scholarship Fund that all Golden Alumni can contribute – past, present, and future. We are now about ready to send out to about 1000 past Golden Alumni to see if they would like to participate. In addition, the Development Office for Speed is reaching out to the next Golden Alumni Classes of 1971, 1972, and 1973 to begin their planning of their reunions as well as making them aware of the Endowment opportunity. Typically, Endowments need to be rather large to make a significant impact for which most of us do not have the funds available to set one up. However, this is a way that individuals, for those that are interested, can contribute and know that they are making an impact. Thus far, our gifts and pledges have ranged from $1000 to $25000, with some being multi-year pledges. The plan is to have recognition for all those that have contributed by Class via an electronic message board in the Lobby of the J B Speed Building.
If you are interested in joining us feel free to contact Mark Daily, Director of Development for Speed (502-852-2400) mark.daily@louisville.edu ) with any questions. You can also go to the following link www.give.louisville.edu/speed1970 to contribute.