Scholarships and Fellowships
Empowering Young Minds
London Williams ’09 grew up in Milwaukee’s inner city filling notebooks with intricate drawings; now he dreams of being an architect. Sara Flom ’07 got interested in accounting in her freshman year of high school in Port Washington, Wisconsin; she sees herself as a CPA. When it came time for college, both students chose UWM, based in part on the offer of scholarship support.
“I always wanted to go to college, but I wasn’t sure I could do it,” says London, who graduated from a technical high school in the city. “My scholarship for UWM was unbelievable—it made the difference between me going to college or not. And the architecture program is really great.”
The valedictorian at her high school, Sara says her scholarship gave her “more opportunities to focus on school, to do my best academically rather than spend my time working to pay for tuition and books. I still work, but now I can focus on a job that gives me great experience rather than one that just pays the bills.”
London, who earned a Morgridge Scholarship, is minoring in business and planning to open his own architectural firm one day. “I’ve learned so much and had extremely dedicated professors,” he says. “One of them recently contacted me to make sure I was going to be in her class again this year.”
Sara, who earned a Rath Scholarship from the Sheldon B. Lubar School of Business, hopes to obtain her MBA after graduating from UWM. “I really love it here,” says Sara. “It’s a great campus and so accessible. It’s fairly big, but it never feels like it because everyone is so friendly.”
Scholarships and fellowships are critical to ensuring that UWM remain a campus of opportunity and access. A campus of opportunity allows students to stretch their minds, hone their skills, and prepare for successful careers and lives; it also gives Milwaukee a highly educated workforce that is a powerful tool for revitalizing its economy. A campus of access makes higher education an option for all qualified and ambitious students, regardless of their financial circumstances.
Scholarships do more than pay the way. They also empower students to do their best. “I’ve written to my scholarship donors and they’ve written back,” says London. “Beyond the financial help, the scholarship really motivates and encourages me. It tells me that there are a lot of people who support me and are counting on me.”
