Keeping the doors of the Sanctuary open to the many deserving students who would attend the institution is Southern Utah University's top fundraising priority. Providing the scholarship and grant opportunities necessary to attract and retain high-quality, deserving students, and offering meaningful work opportunities and valuable real-world experiences to students through mentoring, internship, assistantship and other work programs remains a vital focus for the University.
Several factors are making it increasingly important for the institution to redouble its efforts in this regard. Explosive student growth, the added financial burdens of attending a residential campus, and the steadily increasing quality of its student body have made it difficult for the university to support all but the highest achieving students. The number of high quality and deserving students continues to expand. Southern Utah University's caring and dedicated donors can provide scholarship and work support to the institution's students in a number of ways.
By making unrestricted gifts to the university's general scholarship fund, donors provide resources which may be applied to deserving students with the greatest need, regardless of the department or program in which they are enrolled. Such gifts allow for maximum flexibility in determining the best use of donor's generous support.
Gifts may also be awarded as one-time or annual scholarships, and may be earmarked for students in specific colleges, programs or departments of the university. Donors may further request that their scholarships be awarded to students in particular circumstances, such as those with high academic standing, with minority or non-traditional status or with special leadership skills or talents. On-going annual scholarships may be named for the donor or in honor of an individual of the donor's choosing. At the present time, a gift of approximately $4000 is needed to provide a one-year, full in-state tuition scholarship to an SUU student. For a non-resident scholarship a gift of $13,000 is needed.
Creating a scholarship endowment is an exemplary choice to provide on-going support to SUU's students while establishing a lasting and mutually beneficial partnership between the donor and the university. Under this arrangement, the interest drawn from the original endowment gift is used as a perpetual source of scholarships for university students. Endowments may be named for the donor or in honor of an individual of the donor's choosing. At present, an endowment of approximately $100,000 is needed to finance an annual full in-state tuition scholarship and $300,000 is required for a full non-resident tuition scholarship.
Because of the volatile investment markets and lower earnings of recent years, some donors may prefer to make a multi-year scholarship pledge including an immediate cash or stock gift in lieu of an endowed scholarship gift. This enables the donor to make a major gift that will provide prompt and substantial benefit to students for a period of five to ten years.
See a complete list of endowed scholarships
Contact Lori Blackner for more info