May 23, 2022
Close of academic year brings record-breaking scholarships
Hospitality Management graduate Matthew Alexander waves to his family and friends during ECU’s 2022 Spring Commencement Ceremony at Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium. (ECU Photo by Rhett Butler)
It has been an amazing academic year at the College of Business, starting with the announcement of a gift from MBA graduate Thomas Arthur in September 2021. His $5 million gift led to the College of Business naming its graduate program the Thomas D. Arthur Graduate School of Business. A Sept. 2021 article stated the gift would be used to transform the College’s graduate program and attract more students. Arthur stated, “I wanted to make sure the College would be more military-friendly.”
“When I started discussing this gift with ECU’s leadership, it was important to me to include active-duty military and veterans,” Arthur added. “This segment of students will add so much to the overall experience of the nonmilitary students.”
“The military group will be much more experienced in various aspects of leadership, and the other students and faculty will note their examples. With a Graduate Degree, the military group will be better prepared for a career after the military or if they continue active duty. Either way, they have improved their skills and served as a great example to the nonmilitary students.”
Arthur says it the best; it’s “a win-win for all.”
Pirate Nation Gives
In March 2022, ECU once again held its annual day of giving, i.e., Pirate Nation Gives. Traditionally, the College does very well, and this year was no exception. In 2022, 291 donors gave $1.8 million to prepare the leaders of tomorrow. As always, the College won several campus-wide challenges issued for that day. The challenges included:
- Hospitality Management won $3,000 for the final website gift.
- The COB Student Travel Program won $1,000 for second place farthest away gift.
- And COB Priority Fund won second ($2,500) for the most gifts in terms of donor count and second ($2,000) for the most dollars raised.
What makes Pirate Nation Gives a great day is that our alumni always step up and give to help our faculty and students. Damon Stafford BSBA ’01 joined Dean Paul Schwager in giving $2,400 to each department and school. And, since the Department of Management had the most significant percentage increase in donor participation over last year, it won an additional $1,000.
Record-breaking Scholarships
Last year, the College handed out 190 scholarships valued at more than $370k. This year 208 future leaders received more than $403k in scholarships, a record made possible by a donor who would like to remain unidentified.
The donor graduated from the College 58 years ago with a double major in accounting and business administration, and this is where his donation story starts. It was during his college years when two people entered his life that influenced the donor. One is a very good friend who started a scholarship fund for former COB accounting instructor Gwen Potter. Both the donor and the friend had Potter as an instructor, and the friend was so inspired by the accounting instructor that he and some of his peers decided to start a scholarship fund for Potter.
The donor tells us the friend recently retired, and as a tribute to his good friend, he decided to add to the Gwen Potter Scholarship Fund. His gift, however, came with a twist. Most gifts to the College used for scholarship funds come in the form of an endowment. The donor decided to take a different route because, as he puts it, “whatever I’m going to do for East Carolina University, I want to see the results of my gift,” the donor said.
So, the donor gave $50k to the Gwen Potter Scholarship fund and an additional $50k to help pay for study abroad.
“I’ve been fortunate enough to travel a lot,” he told us. “By seeing what’s going on in the rest of the world, it changes your perspective … and widens the horizon about what is possible.”
Young Alumni Council launches
The Young Alumni Council is a collective of business professionals comprised entirely of ECU alumni under the age of 40. Christian Hill BSBA ’17 is the Council’s chair. He says the Council is “committed to furthering the goals of the College, providing enhanced opportunities for our students and supplying our alumni with impactful opportunities to give of their time, talent, and treasure.”
“We have many goals, and they are continually evolving, but perhaps the most fundamental of these is to build a robust ecosystem of Pirates that fosters an environment of support and growth that will positively change the face of our communities into perpetuity. Few universities are positioned to have the level of impact that ECU can have in the years to come. We intend to harness the collective passion of tens of thousands of Pirate alum to fulfill that potential.”
As the chair of the Young Alumni Council, Hill’s responsibilities are to set the strategic vision for the organization, serve as the liaison and representative of alumni interests to the College of Business, and speak on behalf of the organization at Business Advisory Council sessions and to the greater public.
“My goals are to lay the framework for our organization, develop scalable systems and processes that will empower our organization to thrive for years to come, and develop a positive reputation as an organization so that we can earn the trust of the College, our alumni, and our student body,” says Hill.
Currently, the Young Alumni Council includes eight board members from numerous industries.
“Over the next five years, I fully expect to see our board continuing to operate somewhere between 6-12 members and our general population to swell to several hundred.
