Bucknell University Athletics
Bucknell Trustees Approve Pilot Merit Scholarships Program
11/26/2002 7:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Nov. 26, 2002
LEWISBURG, Pa. - A three-year pilot program to offer merit scholarships at Bucknell University, beginning with students entering the university in fall 2003, was approved Saturday (Nov. 23, 2002) by Bucknell's Board of Trustees.
The program will bring several potential benefits to Bucknell, including more students with high academic performance, greater racial, religious, and socioeconomic diversity, expanded support for the performing arts, and greater competitiveness in Bucknell's men's and women's basketball programs.
The Board's action was carefully considered and came after more than a year of study. Up until now, Bucknell has awarded financial aid only to students with demonstrated financial need.
Merit scholarships will help Bucknell recruit students with skills and background that will enrich the overall student population and the quality of the educational experience at Bucknell - but the pilot merit program will not take funds away from the existing need-based program. Only new funds will be used for the merit scholarship program.
"By approving the program, the Board has provided our admissions staff, faculty and coaches with another tool to recruit the best and brightest students to Bucknell," said Kurt Thiede, vice president for enrollment management. "This is a relatively modest pilot program compared to our ongoing commitment to need-based financial aid." Thiede has been charged with overseeing the program.
In the first year of the program (2003-04), Bucknell plans to award 42 merit scholarships to members of the entering class, the Class of 2007. Academic promise will be the most prominently recognized quality, accounting for 20 of the 42 awards that year.
According to Thiede, there are five principal potential benefits of merit scholarships:
* Enrolling even more top academic students than Bucknell does now.
* Increasing diversity of all kinds (racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, and geographic).
* Supporting performing arts talent, such as musical, theatre and dance.
* Protecting recent gains in Bucknell's first-year class profile.
* Strengthening Bucknell's competitive position within the Patriot League basketball program - the league's marquee sport.
The trustees approved the program with two stipulations:
First, new funds for the merit scholarships must be generated from new sources so as not to take away from need-based aid. Significant funding support for this initiative has already been received and only those funds received by March 1 will be awarded to members of the incoming class. Second, the university must achieve the required balance of athletic versus non-athletic scholarships within the three-year pilot.
The plan calls for three non-athletic scholarship dollars (such as academic, talent, or diversity) to be granted for every athletic scholarship dollar awarded.
The administration will carefully track the program during its first three years and the trustees will be kept updated on its progress. No later than September 2005, the trustees will decide whether or not to continue the three-year pilot program.
In the pilot program's first year, most of the 42 merit scholarships - 32 - will go to students who demonstrate financial need, increasing the amount of their assistance. The other 10 scholarships will go to students who do not demonstrate financial need, according to customary calculations.
Six of the scholarships will be available to three basketball players on each of the men's and women's teams.
Before this decision, Bucknell was one of just two members of the Patriot League requiring basketball players to demonstrate financial need to qualify for any kind of scholarship (athletic or academic). Lafayette College has academic scholarships that are available to student-athletes. Colgate University does not have a no-need, or merit-based, scholarship program.
In addition to the 42 students receiving some form of merit scholarship, Bucknell intends to have 385 first-year students out of a class of 900 receiving need-based aid next year.
Of the 12 institutions that Bucknell tracks as close admissions competitors, eight already offer merit scholarships worth at least $10,000 per year.
Thiede noted that more colleges and universities are offering merit scholarships and/or changing the way they calculate financial need so that previously ineligible families become eligible for aid without any change in their financial situation.
"Achieving Bucknell's admissions goals with need-based aid only becomes more difficult each year, and we're optimistic that merit scholarships will give us a substantial boost in reaching those goals," Thiede said.
