Thursday, August 03, 2006

High honors come with new name, new money

UWM Honors College receives money from business community

**As a matter of disclosure, I am enrolled in the Honors College and am a recipient of scholarship money from the George and Julie Mosher Honors College Fund discussed below.
I also serve as president of the Honors College Student Association.

BY BRADLEY WOOTEN, of SBT

Since the Honors Program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee became the Honors College earlier this year, donors are seeing the value of the small liberal-arts program, they said.
Bob and Judith Scott first began donating three $2,000 scholarships to the then Honors Program in 2001.

Judith Scott said her shared interest in Italian Literature first drew her to the Honors College, which is directed by Lawrence Baldassaro, who is a a professor of Italian and Comparative Literature.

This year, the Scotts have donated $12,000 for honors students interested in studying abroad.

“Our gifts have been a drop in the bucket,” Scott said. “I hope we can inspire other people to donate. It’s a very worthwhile program.”

Scott is employed by Robert W. Baird, which has its corporate headquarters in Milwaukee. After the name change, the company followed the Scotts’ lead in donating to the college, Scott said.

Baird will donate $100,000 over the next four years.

“When the people at Baird were talking about giving money to UWM (in response to the $100 million private donor campaign launched earlier this summer), I convinced them that giving to the Honors College was a great way to bring up the caliber of the students,” Scott said.

Scott and other Milwaukee business leaders hope that the bright graduates will stay in the area.

“The business community is very interested in getting people educated and keeping them in Milwaukee,” Scott said. “If you can provide them help like that it helps to bind them to the community. Hopefully they will lend their intelligence and drive to the community.”

Scott said she and her husband began encouraging George and Julie Mosher to donate to the Honors College last summer.

The George and Julie Mosher Honors College Fund was established in late-July and will provide $200,000 in scholarships over the next four years.

“You know people who graduate from Harvard have the knowledge,” George Mosher said. “But do they have the ambition? The Honors College students at UWM have both.”

The Mosher donation is the largest gift the Honors College has received. So far, 11 Honors College students have benefited from the scholarship money.

“My hope is that (someone) will eventually have the naming rights for the college,” Scott said.

Recently, UWM's School of Business Administration was renamed after its donor, Sheldon B. Lubar.

The Honors College has about 500 students who must complete 21 credits of specialized liberal arts-oriented honors coursework and graduate with a 3.5 or better to receive the university’s high distinction.

“It provides much needed support for students who are richly deserving,” director Baldassaro said. “These are bright, ambitious, motivated students, who – like most UWM students – have to work to pay there way through school. It enables us for the first time to provide really substantial support for our students. It is concrete recognition of the quality of the program and more importantly the quality of our students.”

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