Less scholarships awarded
Lack of funding affects Community Scholars Program
By Kelly Morris
Staff Reporter

The Community Scholars Program, which awards scholarships to minorities from five area high schools, will decrease its number of participants next year because of a lack of outside funding, said Cornell Thomas, special assistant to the chancellor for diversity and community.

He said that despite having 64 high school seniors apply for the program next year, the university will only award approximately 12 scholarships.

“Sept. 11 changed everything,” Thomas said. “We were actually hoping to double the number of participants to 24, but in order to do that, we would have needed more corporate funding. In the future we have to make (the program) more a partnership with TCU and the corporations.”

Thomas said 12 students were awarded scholarships in the program’s first year of existence in 2000-2001 and 19 students were awarded scholarships this year.

The Community Scholars Program, which provides full scholarships and an $850 a semester book stipend for its participants, was created two years ago to help increase the minority population on campus, he said.

Thomas said the university adopted Diamond Hill-Jarvis High School, North Side High School, O.D. Wyatt High School, Dunbar High School and Sam Houston High School to recruit a minority population.

Thomas said $1 million of the university’s budget will be allocated to the funding of the program next fall when four classes of the Community Scholars are currently attending TCU. $186,000 was spent on the program in 2000-2001, he said.

Thomas said he is not giving up on getting more financial support from corporations.
“We are starting to get corporate sponsors specifically for the program,” Thomas said. “We are developing good relationships with several corporations, but it’s a process. We are further along in some of those relationships than others.”

Thomas said Citigroup Corporation is giving $25,000 a year for five years and the B.E.L.I.E.F. Foundation is giving $20,000 a year for five years to support the program.
But Thomas said funding is not the only challenge facing the university.

“Many of the reasons why minority students in this area didn’t apply to this school is because they perceived it to be a very unfriendly place,” Thomas said. “This has been historically true, but now TCU is one of their options.”

Shae Moore, a sophomore psychology major and graduate of O.D. Wyatt High School, said it is that perception that made her adjustment to TCU difficult.

“When I first came to TCU, it was a culture shock,” Moore said. “I was totally overwhelmed. I looked around me and everyone was so different than me. I felt so far behind because I didn’t feel like I had the connections to the university like others had.”

But despite the obstacle, Moore said there is no other school she wanted to attend more than TCU.

“The cost was the only reason I wouldn’t go to TCU,” said Moore. “When they awarded me the scholarship, I knew exactly where I was going.”

According to fall 2001 Institutional Research statistics, 1,041 out of the 8,054 students at TCU were minorities, which represents 12.9 percent of TCU’s student body. 5.4 percent of TCU’s student body were also non-residents of the United States.

Kelly Morris
k.l.morris@student.tcu.edu

credits

TCU Daily Skiff © 2002