-FOR MORE ON THE SUBJECT OF THE CLINTON ADMINSTRATION'S FAVORITE CORPORATE TARGET'S NOW FORMER C.E.O., TAKE YOUR NEXT FOOTSTEP HERE.By TAMAR LEWIN
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which promised to spend $1 billion on higher education for 20,000 low-income minority students over the next two decades, yesterday announced its inaugural class of 4,100 scholars, chosen from more than 62,000 applicants.
For the first 20 scholars identified, it has been something of a whirlwind. Most received their good news last week and were flown to Seattle, the home of Microsoft, for the news conference at which the awards were announced.
Mr. Gates choked up and became teary-eyed after one student broke down in tears while thanking him and his wife, the news agency Reuters reported.
"Actually being here, meeting the kids last night at dinner, hearing about their dreams, it's a very --." At that point Mr. Gates apparently was overcome by emotion and apologized to about 75 people at the news conference, before picking up where he left off, "--exciting thing to have become reality."
Tears were visible in his eyes for several moments as he continued, reported Reuters, which said he showed more emotion than he did on Wednesday when a federal judge ordered that the company he co-founded be broken up to prevent further violations of the antitrust law.
Brandon Williams, 19, of Daphne, Ala., one of the students, said: "This is going to make the road so much easier. The message that I'd won came last week when I was at work at Pizza Hut. It was on the machine, but at first I didn't understand the words I'd been waiting to hear."
Three weeks ago, Mr. Williams completed his freshman year at Xavier University, a historically black institution in New Orleans, where he is a chemistry and pre-med student. "I'm the first in my family to graduate from high school, and my mother and I both had to take out loans for me to go to college," he said.
It is not clear precisely how many students will have scholarships next September, since those selected have until June 15 to send in proof of their financial need and college enrollment for next fall. All those who qualify will receive financing from the foundation. Of those chosen, 1,364 are incoming freshmen, 2,542 continuing undergraduates and 200 graduate students in mathematics, science, engineering, education and library science.
The program will provide $50 million in scholarships a year, to be administered by the United Negro College Fund, in partnership with the Hispanic Scholarship Fund and the American Indian College Fund.
The program will pay the difference between what a student received in financial aid from the college and the cost of his or her tuition, housing and books; the awards will be renewed annually, as long as the students maintain a 3.0 average. About 1,000 new scholarship winners will be chosen each year.
The first 20 winners include a wide range of students, from Lenny Bonilla, a 17-year-old high school senior from Freeport, N.Y., who will be a freshman at Johns Hopkins University in September, to Brandy Rutledge, of Irvington, N.J., a 23-year-old doctoral candidate in biostatistics at Virginia Commonwealth University.
To be eligible, students had to have at least a 3.3 grade-point average and be admitted to, or enrolled in, a four-year undergraduate program or a graduate program in the selected fields for the 2000-2001 school year.
For Amber Pickett, an 18-year-old Quinault Indian from a tiny town three hours south of Seattle, the trip was not long, but it signaled a profound change in her life.
"I found out I'd won on Friday, the day I graduated from high school," Ms. Pickett said. "There were 11 people in my graduating class. I'm going to be a freshman at the University of Washington next year and study fisheries. I want to be the first one in my family to graduate from college and I want to make an impact for Native Americans."
The 62,000 students competing for the scholarships were judged on the basis of grades, leadership skills, community involvement and financial need.
"It was kind of weird how I heard about the program," said Daniel Serna, a 22-year-old senior at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who grew up in Georgia, Texas and Mexico. "One of my roommates is really big into trying to find scholarships, and I was just hanging around when he was filling this out, right before it was due, so I did it, too."
Mr. Serna, a biology major with a 3.5-grade-point average, won a scholarship but his roommate did not.
"He was on vacation when I heard," Mr. Serna said, "but I had to tell him when he got back."
(text of June 9, 2000 New York Times On The Web article)
-FOR MORE ON THE SUBJECT OF THE CLINTON ADMINSTRATION'S FAVORITE CORPORATE TARGET'S NOW FORMER C.E.O., TAKE YOUR NEXT FOOTSTEP HERE.