Friday, April 23, 2010

Through several annual gifts of $50,000 from The Bernard Osher Foundation, numerous non-traditional students with unique situations and needs have received financial assistance for tuition at the University of North Carolina Wilmington over the past three years. Now, the foundation has expanded those grants into a $1 million endowment for the Osher Reentry Scholarship Program.

UNC Wilmington Chancellor Rosemary DePaolo announced the new scholarship endowment Friday morning at the quarterly meeting of the university’s Board of Trustees.

“We are so grateful to The Bernard Osher Foundation for this significant gift,” she said. “UNCW is committed to assisting and supporting non-traditional students in completing a bachelor’s degree and gaining entry into the workforce. This is a highly competitive grant program, and we are pleased and proud to have been selected based on the services we already have established to aid this student population.”

The scholarship program provides funding of $2,000 per year for recipients. The Foundation defines reentry students as those individuals who have experienced a cumulative disruption in their education of five or more years and who want to resume their undergraduate university studies to complete a degree. The scholarship is intended to benefit students who have considerable years of employability ahead of them—ideally aged 25 to 50.Students must demonstrate financial need, academic promise and a commitment to completing their degrees.
 
“The Osher Reentry Scholarship was the lifeline that helped me stay in school and finish my education,” said Laura Hall, a recipient for the 2009-10 academic year. “Without it, I would have to work 50 to 60 hours a week—instead of the 45 that I do work—to make ends meet and pay for tuition and books. The only other option for a student like me is to max out student loans. I feel strongly that no student should have to put themselves into a decade worth of debt to obtain an education.”
 
Hall, a senior majoring in business administration, left a difficult marriage at age 30, moved to a new town, enrolled at UNCW and began a journey to a new life. She said that journey would have been much longer and harder without financial assistance.

“The scholarship hasn’t just impacted my life,” she said. “It has changed the direction of my life every day.”

The foundation launched the Osher Reentry Scholarship Program in 2005. The program includes 73 institutions in 30 states and the District of Columbia. UNC Wilmington and UNC Charlotte are the only participating universities in North Carolina. UNCW has competed for and received a $50,000 gift each year since 2007 for the program, which has supported a $2,000 gift toward tuition for 25 reentry students. More recently, the university received an additional $50,000 gift, which will ensure that scholarships can be awarded for the 2010-11 academic year while the new $1 million endowment begins to accrue interest.

This is the second $1 million endowment that UNC Wilmington has received from The Bernard Osher Foundation. The first, received in 2007, supports the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at UNCW. Andy Lynch, program officer with the foundation, said UNCW was chosen to receive the endowment funding because of the many support programs it provides to non-traditional students, including the Seahawk Perch office, which provides resources for non-traditional, off-campus, graduate and military-affiliated students, academic support and tutoring, and job placement assistance through the Career Center.

“UNCW provides a supportive environment for returning students from admissions through graduation,” said Lynch. “When a university demonstrates that it has made a significant investment in supporting this student population, we feel more confident as a foundation investing in that institution.”

The class of Osher Reentry Scholars for the 2009-10 academic year had an average age of 34 and carried an average GPA of 3.5. The most common academic majors represented were business administration (9), nursing (5) and education (3). Many of the students plan to continue to live and work in the Cape Fear area, and will bring significant life experience to their professions.

Senior nursing student Nichole Conner Sterioti returned to her studies after serving in the military. While at UNCW, she interned at PPD, Inc. and became engaged to her new husband, who is also a scholarship recipient.

“I joined the U.S. Army in 2000 and was able to travel throughout Europe and the United States,” she said. “After being deployed to Iraq, I knew that I had unfinished business to take care of. I relocated to Wilmington and began attending UNCW again after 10 years. Had it not been for the existence of this scholarship, I may never have had the opportunities that now face me.”

Media contact:
Dana Fischetti, media relations manager, 910.962.7259 or fischettid@uncw.edu