Students garner $13.9 million in Project Excellence scholarships

10.04.00

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WASHINGTON — More than 679 scholarship offers, totaling more than $13.9 million, were made to students from the greater Washington area today during the annual Project Excellence/Freedom Forum Scholarship Day.

Project Excellence was founded in 1987 by the late Carl T. Rowan, a veteran journalist who rose from poverty to a wide-ranging career as reporter, columnist, diplomat and government official. The program provides scholarship assistance to academically talented black students from the greater Washington, D.C., area. Project Excellence Scholarships are awarded at an annual spring dinner, but the number of worthy students has always exceeded the funds available. So in 1994, Rowan developed the idea for the Project Excellence Scholarship Day college fair in partnership with The Freedom Forum, in order to match more students with colleges seeking to enroll capable black students.

Officials from many of the nation's best colleges and universities made on-the-spot offers to students from public, private and parochial schools in the District of Columbia, the city of Alexandria in Virginia, Fairfax and Arlington counties in Virginia, and Montgomery and Prince George's counties in Maryland. To participate in this college fair, students had to be nominated by their school and have at least a 3.2 (out of 4.0) grade-point average.

"Project Excellence is Carl Rowan's most far-reaching and enduring legacy. It will carry his aspirations for talented black youngsters far into the future by providing them with the assistance they need to soar," said Charles L. Overby, chairman and chief executive officer of The Freedom Forum. "The Freedom Forum is proud to help connect these accomplished young people with first-rate institutions of higher education. We want to see them succeed."

"At each stage of his own academic career, my father encountered a teacher who refused to let him fail, who pushed, cajoled and demanded that he put forth his best academic effort," said Dr. Jeffrey Rowan, Rowan's son and director of Project Excellence. "It is this same demanding spirit, coupled with support and inspiration, that is his lasting gift to Project Excellence."

Students streamed into the Washington Hilton exhibit hall where the colleges and universities had set up recruiting booths. Many walked out with multiple scholarship offers. Hartwick College, for example, was making a minimum scholarship offer of $15,000 a year to any interested student attending today's college fair. Depending on students' SAT scores and other qualifications, they could be eligible for even more financial assistance.

Latonya Robertson of Du Val High School in Lanham, Md., hoped to go to Ball State University. The school offered her a scholarship for half tuition, with the possibility of more aid once she had completed the application process. She said, "I liked the student/teacher ratio and the location, in Indiana, and if that's my best offer, I'll probably go there."

Guidance counselors and parents accompanied some of the students, but were asked to wait on the sidelines while students made the rounds of the schools.

"We think Scholarship Day is great," said T'wana Warrick-Bell, chairman of the guidance department at Forestville High School in Prince George's County, Md. "I have 10 students

here, all top students, and I would have brought more if I could have."

The Navy ROTC program offered 13 scholarships of $100,000 each. Chief Yeoman Emery Simmons, one of the ROTC recruiters, was surprised to find familiar faces in the crowd. "Two of the kids sitting across the table from me today were youngsters I coached when they were in the third grade," Simmons said, of two potential recruits who are now seniors at Bishop McNamara High School in the District.

At previous Scholarship Days, a total of 2,308 scholarship offers, amounting to more $66.6 million, were made by the colleges. Among the colleges and universities represented this year were Cornell University, Duke University, Oberlin College, Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, Vanderbilt University, and Ohio State University. Local colleges and universities attending included American University, George Washington University, George Mason University, Howard University and Catholic University.

The Freedom Forum has contributed more than $2.6 million to Project Excellence over the last 13 years, including a $1 million endowment announced last May to support ongoing scholarships to college-bound black students who plan to study journalism. Promoting diversity in the nation's newspaper newsrooms is one of The Freedom Forum's top institutional priorities.

For more information about Project Excellence, please contact Pam Paroline or Marian Rowan at 202/966-7888.

For more information about The Freedom Forum, please contact Donna Fowler at 703/284-2887.