IU announced a $773,000 grant to the School of Education’s Balfour Scholars program Thursday.
The grant from the Lloyd G. Balfour Foundation will go to funding the pre-college program, which brings rising high school seniors to IU for about a week in July. According to the press release from the University, this grant will allow the program to continue for another four years.
The foundation, which was founded in 1973, gives grants to institutions of higher education and organizations that benefit Attleboro, Massachusetts, Balfour’s hometown. It also provides scholarships for children of Balfour Corporation employees, according to the Bank of America website.
Balfour, who attended IU at the turn of the nineteenth century, created a company, which, to this day, specializes in commemorative rings for sports teams, graduating classes and greek organizations. To apply for the scholarship, students need to be enrolled in a college preparatory program and maintain a grade-point average of 2.7. A majority of the program’s participants are Indiana residents.
“The Balfour Scholars Program is a great example of the benefits and positive outcomes of providing students a safe space to productively engage and explore aspects of their identity, careers and global citizenship,” said Christina Wright Fields, former director of the Balfour Scholars Program, in the release. “It provides multiple opportunities for marginalized students to gain access to knowledge and resources integral to their academic and future educational success.”
The Balfour Scholars program seeks to prepare students for college in areas of academic and financial preparedness, and it’s administered through the School of Education’s Center for P-16 Research & Collaboration. The P-16 Center’s research focuses on the success of students beginning in pre-kindergarten and ending in post-secondary education, hence the center’s name.
High school students who visit IU in July will have the opportunity to attend sample lectures, meet with current college students and attend information sessions on college planning. They’ll live in residence halls, and, according to the program’s website, the student-to-counselor ratio is somewhere between 10- and 15-to-1.
In addition to making college attendance realistic, a goal of the program is the completion of a degree. The Chronicle of Higher Education, using data from 2013, has reported Indiana’s six-year graduation rate is approximately 55 percent, only slightly lower than the national average of about 57 percent.
In the same report, IU ranked highest for both four- and six-year college completion rates, at 58.3 and 77 percent respectively. Purdue University came in second and was followed by Ball State University.
In addition to the week-long program in July, the Balfour Scholars program at IU also operates a separate textbook fund for undergraduate students based on donations. According to the program’s website, award selections are based on financial need, academic achievement and
potential for future success. Eight students received the award in 2017.
According to the information on the Lloyd G. Balfour Foundation’s site, which hasn’t listed donations after 2015, the recent grant is comparatively large, save for an $800,000 grant announced at the creation of the program in 2013.
Between 2008 and 2015, the organization donated about $1.2 million to IU and the IU Foundation. Past donation amounts to the Balfour Scholars program which were made public were in the low six figures. Notre Dame University is the only other recipient of these grants listed in Indiana.
