Support and Inspiration
Scholarships help underrepresented students
Courtesy of University Communications
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UTEP student Yanawi B. Quiñones
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Education has been called the great leveler in that it can help guide anyone with a capacity to learn along the road to success. The less fortunate reality is that higher education comes at a price that not everyone can achieve.
Enter The Greater Texas Foundation, a non-profit organization that has provided loans and grants for more than 25 years to help underrepresented and/or needy Lone Star students to reach their academic goals.
To date, the foundation has provided $166,000 in scholarship support to UTEP through its three primary programs: “Generation Proud,” for first generation college students; “Rising to the Challenge,” for students who will transfer to a university from a community college; and “Removing Educational Barriers,” for students in financial need.
More than 40 students at The University of Texas at El Paso have benefitted from the foundation’s different scholarship plans since 2003. Among them is Yanawi B. Quinones, a junior history major, who plans to be a high school history teacher.
“Not only did this grant help to make my dream come true (of going to college), but my parents dream come true,” says Quinones, the first person in her family to attend college. “I was very proud to get it.”
The foundation awarded $2,500 through its “Generation Proud” program to Quinones, a 19-year-old Montana Vista resident with a 3.95 GPA. She used the money to help pay for tuition.
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-Wynn Rosser
Executive Director
The Greater Texas Foundation
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Her story is the kind that reminds foundation staffers why they do what they do, says Wynn Rosser, a long-time Texas A&M educator and adminsitrator who became the organization's executive director in January 2007.
“At the end of the day, when you realize that 90 percent of the students we help are successful, it makes you feel good,” he says. “And that’s an understatement.”
The financial help is a boon to UTEP because the different scholarship programs are aimed at a sizeable percentage of the university’s student population.
A first recipient of a “Removing Educational Barriers” endowed scholarship will be presented in mid-August. UTEP has three endowed scholarships where local donors matched foundation gifts. These will enable up to five more students to earn scholarships of $1,000 or more next fall.
The foundation is run out of its headquarters in Bryan, Texas, a small community about five miles northwest of College Station. It supports education through its grants and programs to improve educational quality through public-private partnerships.
The organization has evolved through the years into an organization that has provided around $4 million in grants to Texas students.