San Diego Foundation to grant $500K to UCSD Black Alumni Scholarship Fund

By SDCN Editor

San Diego, CA–The San Diego Foundation announced that it will award the University of California San Diego Black Alumni Scholarship Fund $500,000 for student scholarships and support of Black students attending the university. 

“We deeply appreciate this strong expression of confidence in our continued growth as a program that is providing more opportunities for outstanding, civic-minded Black students to attend and thrive at our great university,” said Edward Spriggs, Chair of the UC San Diego Black Alumni Scholarship Fund at San Diego Foundation. “This gift from the San Diego Foundation means the world to our current and future students and the BASF advisory board.”

Established as a “challenge grant,” the foundation will award the funding when an equivalent amount of donations are raised, essentially doubling the impact of gifts to the Black Alumni Scholarship Fund. The fund advisors for the UC San Diego, which is housed within the San Diego Foundation, hope to raise $500,000 in 2024 as the first phase of their campaign to raise $10 million by 2028 to support 200 additional UC San Diego students each year, which would double the size of the current fund program at the university. 

“As the largest scholarships provider in the region outside of the university systems, San Diego Foundation partners with individuals, families, corporations, and nonprofit organizations to transform the lives of deserving students through the gift of higher education,” said Pamela Gray Payton, SDF Chief Impact and Partnerships Officer and UC San Diego alumna. “Since the start of their fund, BASF has shown a true commitment to ensuring the success of Black students at UC San Diego.”

The UC San Diego Black Alumni Scholarship Fund was founded in 1983 to provide scholarships to attract more Black students to UC San Diego and enable them to excel academically. Since 2002, the fund has awarded more than $802,000 in scholarships to over 350 students, with scholarships evenly split between students studying arts, humanities, and social sciences, and those studying engineering, mathematics, and biological and physical sciences. In recent years, the growth of the fund has accelerated. This past fall, the fund awarded a record number of 60 scholarships to incoming freshman and transfer students, bringing the total number of Black Alumni Scholarship Fund scholars on campus to nearly 200. 

Black Alumni Scholarship Fund scholars are competitively selected based largely on their academic and community service records. The expectation is that the scholars will excel academically and, following graduation, become leaders in their fields while contributing to a more just and equitable society.

UC San Diego is committed to improving the university experience for its Black students, staff, and faculty. In 2016, UC San Diego launched its Black Academic Excellence Initiative to help strengthen support for the Black campus community and improve the presence and experience of Black faculty, students, and staff. Through the UC San Diego Black Academic Excellence Initiative, the Black Alumni Scholarship Fund connects recipients to existing programs that support the success of all students at UC San Diego, such as transition programs, networking with faculty and alumni mentoring, academic planning support and workshops on experiential learning that advances personal and career development.

For more information about UC San Diego Black Alumni Scholarship Fund at San Diego Foundation and how to donate, visit basf-sandiego.com.