George Washington President Steven Knapp lunched on Tuesday with a group of GW’s Gates Millennium Scholars, a program that provides outstanding minority students with good-through-graduation scholarships to use at the university of their choice.
During his opening remarks at the luncheon in the City View Room, Dr. Knapp emphasized the university’s focus on service and innovation, telling the students they help contribute to that mission.
“You’re the ones who take that culture of service out into the nation and the world and really make a difference,” Dr. Knapp told the roughly 20 students in attendance. “That’s why our students are so important to us. You bring so much value, like diversity of experience, backgrounds, talents, skills and knowledge.”
GW currently has 29 Gates Millennium Scholars, a group that hails from all over the country and includes both undergraduate and graduate students in the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences, the Elliott School of International Affairs, the School of Business, the School of Engineering and Applied Science, the School of Public Health and Health Services and the Graduate School of Education and Human Development.
Since it began at GW in 2000, the program has awarded $4 million to support 67 Gates Millennium Scholars. For the 2011-12 academic year alone, the Gates Millennium Scholars awards total $835,000.
The program began in 1999 with a $1 billion grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
One of the awardees, who attended Tuesday’s luncheon, is GW freshman Samantha Dewar.
Ms. Dewar said although the application process for the award was tedious, it was well worth it. She was proud of her personal statement, she said, because it detailed her difficult transition from Jamaica to the United States. She made the trip in 2005 just before starting seventh grade to live with her mother and siblings, whom she had never met.
“I felt like I was sort of alone in a big country,” Ms. Dewar recalled. “I was somewhat against the idea of having to live in a new country and having to go through the changes. But then once I overcame that, I began to appreciate that I actually came here and got better opportunities, especially in education.”
The award enabled her to go to GW—an opportunity she wouldn’t have had because of her family’s financial situation, she said.
“It’s a life-changing opportunity,” said Ms. Dewar, who is interested in pursuing medicine. “Without the Gates Millennium Scholarship, a lot of doors wouldn’t have been opened. It’s something that you go back and think, this was well worth it. I wouldn’t be at GW without the Gates Millennium Scholarship.”