Tuesday, Feb 10, 2015
The program has awarded almost $450,000 to Rider to assist incoming students
by Sarah Brown '15
As a senior at Franklin High School in Franklin, N.J., Fatima Koroma received a Gates Millennium Scholarship, which is only given to 1,000 students in the nation every year. The scholarship helps to support undergraduate students for up to five years in the discipline and university of their choice. For Koroma, the decision was clear: She would used the funds to attend Rider University.
“There was no way I could pay for school on my own,” she says. “I knew if I wanted to go to a good university like Rider, I had to apply for the scholarship. Receiving it opened up a lot of opportunities for me, most notably helping me to attend here.”
This scholarship support has allowed Koroma, a junior majoring in marketing and minoring in Spanish, to focus more intensely on her studies and worry less about the financial burden of tuition and other costs.
The Gates Millennium Scholarship Program was launched in 1999 and has since produced over 18,000 Gates Millennium Scholars who have attended over 1,800 colleges and universities. Since the program's inception, the program has awarded almost $450,000 to Rider to assist incoming students.
Kofi Gwira ’03, who majored in management and leadership/international business, was also granted the scholarship with the guidance of Rider's Student Support Services. “The staff encouraged me to think big and to believe that anything was possible as long as I set my mind to it,” Kofi says. “With their support, I applied for and received a full tuition-and-board scholarship for my time at Rider.”
Along with undergraduate assistance, the Gates program also offers scholars up to five years of funding for a master’s or doctoral degree (or both) in computer science, education, engineering, library science, mathematics, public health or science. One of the central goals of the program is "to promote academic excellence and to provide an opportunity for outstanding minority students with significant financial need to reach their highest potential." As long as students maintain good academic standing, the awards are renewable each year.
For more information about overall scholarship support at Rider, visitwww.rider.edu/finaid. For information about the Gates Millennium Scholarship, visit www.gmsp.org.