By Ketul PatelThe Daily Northwestern
Additional scholarships will be available to lower-income Northwestern students and student athletes with funding from a recent donation by the Ryan family.
The amount of the gift is not being disclosed, said Alan Cubbage, vice president for university relations.
A portion of the donation also will go toward graduate fellowships in nanotechnology-related fields and completing the Robert H. Lurie Medical Research Center.
Patrick Ryan is the chairman of NU’s Board of Trustees, and he, his wife and their family have donated money in the past to NU. The money was used for renovations to Ryan Field. Patrick and his wife, Shirley Welsh-Ryan, are both NU alumni.
The new gift will allow the university to assist more low-income students by replacing student loans with scholarships in their financial aid packages, Cubbage said. This expands a program that began with students in the class of 2010.
“The university is making an effort to reach out to lower-income students in an effort to create greater economic diversity among students,” he said.
Cubbage said low-income families are those with incomes under $45,000. This number is used by the Consortium on Financing Higher Education, an organization composed of 31 private colleges and universities.
NU will award the scholarships based on a combination of both need and merit, Cubbage said, and will be given to selected “top students” from low-income families.
As a result, not all low-income students at NU will receive these scholarships, he said.
“Unfortunately, we don’t have a large enough endowment,” Cubbage said. “We don’t yet have enough funding to do it.”
He declined to discuss the number of students who have had their student loans replaced by scholarships.
Mark Murphy, director of university athletics, said the gift will be a big help to the athletic department because the university now has to fund the scholarships given to student athletes.
“The Ryan family has done so much for the athletic department,” he said. “The gift helps ensure the long-term stability of the athletic department because it lessens the financial costs the athletic department presents to the university.”
NU currently awards 261 scholarships, some partial, to student-athletes. The number of athletic scholarships given will remain the same, Cubbage said.
“Some of the funds now used for (athletic) scholarships can be used for other purposes,” he said.
NU also will use a portion of the Ryan family’s donation to complete the Lurie Medical Research Center, said Lewis Landsberg, dean of NU’s Feinberg School of Medicine and vice president for medical affairs.
“The building has been critical in recruiting new researchers to the university,” he said.
Patrick Ryan could not be reached for comment. He said in a press release that he and his family were pleased that their donation would support NU in these developments.
“By providing educational opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students and supporting important scientific research, it is our hope that our gifts benefit not just Northwestern University, but the entire Chicago region and beyond,” he said in the release.
Reach Ketul Patel at [email protected].
