Paying for post-secondary education, especially college, has become a mountain for many students and their families to climb. Any parent who has helped a son or daughter go to college knows what an undertaking—even sacrifice—it is. At the same time, a college education remains of great value. Not only is the college experience a path to personal growth and discovery, it also leads to significantly greater earning power.

We formed the Charger Pride Scholarship Foundation to help students from Memorial to climb that mountain and not just make it to college but to succeed in obtaining a degree. Many organizations such as ours help students with a stipend for their freshman year, which is laudable—but what of the succeeding years?

We try to help in two ways. One is through awarding students four-year scholarships, which we have done since 2021. A few of those scholarships have been worth as much as $10,000, but we’ve also awarded four-year scholarships of lesser value. Second, we work hard to guide Memorial students to mentoring and student-support programs at their chosen schools. In the long run, the latter can prove to be even more valuable. In an era when almost a third of college students don’t even return for their sophomore year, encouraging students—especially first-generation college students—to apply for and enroll in support programs that make available financial aid, tutoring, mentoring, internships, and so on is something we strongly believe in.

Lastly, we are also glad to financially support students enrolling directly in career- and job-training programs. We have been very pleased to award scholarships to those Memorial students as well.