The 2011 SCE Scholarship Luncheon brought together SCE’s scholarship donors and student scholars currently benefiting from our donor sponsored scholarships. Connecting our donors and students gave our scholarship recipients the opportunity to express their appreciation to their donors. Donors learned firsthand how their support helps our SCE computer science and engineering students and the impact it has on their scholarship students’ lives and careers. Two student speakers, Riddhiman Das and Taya Upkes, captured the hearts of all attending with their personal stories of how their scholarship changed their lives. Donor Debby Dilks talked about her personal reasons for supporting students via scholarship, including how her own father’s struggle to obtain an education and her mother’s dedication to women’s intellectual equity underlined and motivated her family’s endowment of two scholarships.

SCE was proud to recognize six new or newly endowed scholarships this year, four of which were newly endowed in 2011! They are the 1) Ankit Agarwal Computer Science Scholarship Fund; 2) Dr. C. Quinton Bowles Memorial Scholarship Endowment; 3) Black & Veatch Scholarship; 4) Mahatma Gandhi Scholarship; 5) SCE Alumni Scholarship Fund and 6) Sprint Scholarship. Three of the four newly endowed scholarship donors were present and recognized for their generosity and commitment to our computer science and engineering students. Minda Mason, Director of Major Gifts for SCE, emphasized that 70% of our SCE students qualify for some sort of scholarship support and that our SCE scholarship recipients are frequently our campus leaders , serving in key roles in student government, participating in community service and raising the level of academic performance in our classrooms.

It is with great appreciation that Dean Kevin Truman and Chancellor Leo Morton thank all of our scholarship donors!