When the Vols take on the Mocs Saturday at Neyland stadium, University of Tennessee President Randy Boyd hopes both UT-Knoxville and UT-Chattanooga fans will have something to cheer for together: raising funds to permanently fund the UT Promise scholarship.
During the game, the UT system will publicly kick off a $100 million endowment campaign, which has already raised $17.5 million since March for the program to provide full tuition scholarships to qualified students from families with annual incomes under $50,000.
"This endowment will allow us to keep our promise for years to come," Boyd said in an announcement of the new campaign Friday.
Until the endowment is funded, the University will cover the cost of the students' scholarships but UT is raising funds to help pay for the assistance to aid more low- and moderate-income students to attend one of the four University of Tennessee schools across the state.
UT Promise was unveiled in March by Boyd as last-dollar scholarship program that guarantees free tuition and mandatory fees for undergraduate students from Tennessee with a family household income of under $50,000 after other financial aid is received, such as Pell Grants, HOPE Scholarships or other institutional scholarships. The program is available for undergraduate students at UT Knoxville, UT Chattanooga, UT Martin and UT Health Science Center.
Students must qualify for the Hope Scholarship and meet the academic qualifications for the institution to be eligible for the new UT Promise scholarship. To help ensure success, students will be matched with volunteer mentors and must complete eight hours of service each semester.
Boyd patterned the program after the tnAchieves program that provides free two-year community college education, along with mentors and public service requirements, for all Tennesssee students.
While 46 percent of UT students graduate without debt, Boyd said the goal of UT Promise is to make higher education even more accessible and affordable for Tennessee students.
"UT wants to ensure that Tennessee residents can achieve their dreams with college degrees," Boyd said in a statement today. "We want to ease the financial burden for the state's middle- and working-class families as we know education is the route to change lives, which then change communities and the state."
UT Promise will launch next year with its first class in the fall of 2020, and the scholarship program will include those students who were previously enrolled in college when the program begins in 2020.
In addition to the money raised through the campaign, proceeds from the sale of the Eugenia Williams house in Knoxville will go into the endowment, which will be known formally as the UT Promise Dr. David Hitt Williams Endowment in honor of Eugenia Williams' father, whose will gave the house and acreage on the Tennessee River to the University upon his daughter's death.
UT Promise is another tool the University is using to help the state's Drive to 55 workforce development initiative, which aims to get 55 percent of Tennesseans equipped with a college degree or certificate by 2025.
In a speech to the Chattanooga Rotary Club earlier this year, Boyd said UT Promise fulfills the goals of land grant universities to provide the education for upward mobility among the state's residents.
"The primary mission of land grant universities like the University of Tennessee is to be a ladder up for working class and middle-class people," said Boyd, who was the first person in his family to graduate from college when he earned his degree at UT-Knoxville in 1979 and went on to build Radio Systems Corp., into a $400 million-a-year pet fence manufacturer. "That's our mission at the University of Tennessee.
More information about UT Promise is available at https://tennessee.edu/ut-promise/.