The George Washington University School of Engineering and Applied Science has received an $11 million investment (the Clark Scholars Investment) from the A. James & Alice B. Clark Foundation. The investment will expand the Clark Scholars Program, which provides GW engineering students with financial assistance, leadership experience and opportunities for professional development and networking.
Of the Clark Scholars Investment, $10 million will support the existing Clark Scholars Program endowment. The remaining $1 million will support the Clark Scholars Program’s community service pillar through an annual philanthropy challenge culminating in a new course where students explore philanthropy, apply engineering design and strengthen partnerships with local community-based organizations.
“We are profoundly grateful to the Clark Foundation for their continued belief in our students and in the power of engineering to change the world,” said GW President Ellen M. Granberg. “This extraordinary investment strengthens our commitment to student success—ensuring that every Clark Scholar has the opportunity, mentorship and resources to reach their fullest potential and lead with impact in their professions and communities.”
The Clark Scholars investment will have powerful and lasting impact for a program that already makes a material difference not only to individual students but also to the school as a whole, said Jason Zara, interim GW Engineering dean and professor of biomedical engineering.
“The Clark Scholars Program not only brings students with leadership skills to campus, but it also further develops those skills to truly benefit the leaders themselves, GW Engineering and all of GW.”
“The Clark Scholars Program is about providing opportunities for talented engineering students to access the resources, experiences and community they need to thrive,” said Natalie Grandison, director for higher education and strategy at the Clark Foundation. “This investment at GW will expand those opportunities, ensuring scholars receive not only a world-class education but also the mentorship, leadership development and hands-on experiences that prepare them to make a lasting impact as engineers.”
The Clark Scholars Program began at GW in 2011 with an $8 million investment from the late A. James Clark, a GW trustee emeritus and former President and CEO of Clark Construction Group. In 2017, the Clark Foundation doubled the program’s impact with an additional $8 million in support. Besides opening doors to highly qualified students by awarding annual need- and merit-based scholarships, the program prepares scholars for future leadership positions with a range of experiences including one-on-one mentorship and opportunities for research and community service.
“GW has been a cornerstone partner in the Clark Scholars Program since its earliest days,” said Courtney Clark Pastrick, board chair of the Clark Foundation and daughter of A. James and Alice B. Clark. “My father believed deeply in the power of education to change lives, and it is inspiring to see his legacy carried forward at GW, preparing generations of engineers to lead with both skill and purpose.”
The two-semester participatory design course, “Community-Based Participatory Engineering Design,” will develop students’ service leadership skills while giving them hands-on experience addressing real-world challenges in partnership with community organizations. Student teams may, for instance, prepare and submit competing budget proposals to address the needs of nonprofit partner organizations in the community, with the winning teams granted the money and time to actually address those challenges in the real world.
Clark Scholars Program Faculty Director Royce Francis said the class will be built around cornerstone principles of the Clark Scholars Program at GW: servant leadership, impact through engineering design and legacy beyond the classroom.
“Usually, in class, your product is your scholarship,” said Francis, an associate professor of engineering management and systems. “But when you become a practicing engineer, your product becomes the actual service you are tasked to perform, and you aren’t doing that for grades; you’re doing it to make sure the thing is done properly. So this is an opportunity to work with a real client in a collaborative space and also to have an impact on your community beyond yourself.”
When taking on an engineering project, Francis said, students are trained to acquire an eye for physical realities—friction, gravity, thermodynamics. In the same way, “Community-Based Participatory Engineering Design” will give second- and third-year Clark Scholars experience with the way organizational realities play out, how those realities affect a project’s impact and how to build them into a project’s initial schema.
“Design is where we decide what our objectives are going to be, what things are worth doing and where to make our trade-offs,” Francis said. “We want students to think about design as a discipline and how it interfaces with engineering, in the same way that disciplines like math and physics and chemistry interface with engineering.”
The expansion of the Clark Scholars Program will allow it to continue impacting people like Amy Fehr, B.S. ’24, M.S. ’25.
An initial aid package from the program brought Fehr to GW, but it was the continued support of her fellow Clark Scholars and the leadership and research opportunities provided by the community that opened the path to an advanced degree, she said.
“As I got integrated with the Clark Scholars Program at our yearly orientation, I learned that it would do a lot more for me than get me in the door,” Fehr said. “The Clark Scholars community was one of my most valuable resources throughout college. My fellow scholars were always there to push me to be brave and seek out opportunities, challenging me to make the most out of my college experience.”
