$1.2 Million Scholarship Encourages Entrepreneurs
by Susan L. Murad
Photo by A. Sue Weisler
Getting Advice
Amanda Massab, ¹06, ¹07, a graduate student in RIT¹s College of Applied Science and Technology, discusses her business plan with Associate Professor Richard DeMartino, director of RIT¹s Albert J. Simone Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
A Florida-based charity has donated $600,000 for deaf and hard-of-hearing Rochester Institute of Technology students who are eager to become entrepreneurs.
The Johnson Scholarship Foundation¹s Endowed Scholarship for Innovation & Entrepreneurship will annually award $5,000 to 12 deaf or hard-of-hearing RIT students who are studying entrepreneurship.
The donation qualifies for federal matching funds, making the scholarship base $1.2 million. As an incentive to encourage community donations, the Johnson Scholarship Foundation is offering to match up to an additional $100,000 in donations received from outside sources, which could result in increasing the total scholarship endowment to $1.6 million.
Launching a new business is a daunting task for any entrepreneur, and deaf and hard-of hearing students pursuing new ventures face additional challenges, which can often prevent them from becoming successful. This has limited the number of deaf entrepreneurs.
³The Johnson Scholarship Foundation believes that education empowers people to be more independent and to more fully participate in the economic and social benefits of our society,² says foundation president Malcolm Macleod.
³Our creation of an endowed scholarship for innovation and entrepreneurship for deaf and hard- of-hearing students at RIT/NTID was a natural outgrowth of these ideas. We have every confidence that this scholarship will help generations of deaf and hard-of-hearing students to become successful entrepreneurs.²
The scholarships are expected to enable some students to attend college who might otherwise not be able to. They are also expected to enable recipients to devote more time to research and studying than working to pay for college.
³These scholarships will help free
up students, so they can focus on
participating in course-related activities and developing their business models, rather than working to pay for their education,² says Dr. T. Alan Hurwitz, NTID¹s dean and CEO and vice president of RIT for NTID. ³They will have an important advantage in establishing their businesses after graduation.²
The first scholarships are expected to
be awarded later this year. Amanda
Massab, ¹06, ¹07, a Career and Human Resource Development graduate student in RIT¹s College of Applied Science and Technology who is taking courses in the entrepreneurial program, looks forward to the launch of the scholarship.
³I developed a business plan for my entrepreneurial class, and I thought it was a lot of fun and interesting,² says the Brooklyn, N.Y., native. ³I think it¹s a great idea to have a scholarship for deaf and hard-of-hearing students in this area because I¹m sure I¹m not the only one who has ideas.
Not only will we need scholarship money to help get started, but we need mentors, too.²
The timing of the donation fits with RIT President Bill Destler¹s vision of making RIT the first ³innovation university.²
The Johnson Scholarship Foundation, based in West Palm Beach, was created in
1991 by Theodore and Vivian Johnson. Theodore Johnson was an employee of United Parcel Service in the early 1920s and bought stock in the company at every opportunity, which appreciated over his lifetime. He felt he had been lucky in life and wanted to use his wealth to help other people.
Reprinted with permission from the Spring/Summer 2008 issue of FOCUS magazine, a publication of the National Technical Institute for the Deaf <http://www.rit.edu/ntid> at Rochester Institute of Technology.
