Sam Rose ’58 Makes Dickinson Education Possible This Year for 135 Students With New Scholarship Gift
Sam Rose ’58. Photo by Carl Socolow '77.
Rose deepens legacy of impact and generosity with new gift
Sam Rose ’58 has made a Dickinson education possible for 135 students this year with a new $5 million gift supporting scholarships at the college. The new gift builds on his legacy of philanthropy which includes an endowed scholarship that has helped hundreds of students attend Dickinson and will continue to do so in the future, the Durden Athletic Training Center and the Sam Rose ’58 and Julie Walters Prize at Dickinson College for Global Environmental Activism, which brings sustainability thought-leaders to campus each year.
“Sam’s amazing generosity will make an immediate impact because the funds go directly to our financial aid budget at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic has increased student need for scholarships,” says Dickinson President Margee Ensign. “But the impact of this gift will also reverberate well into the future since the students Sam helps to attend Dickinson today will go on to graduate and become tomorrow’s difference makers in the wider world. These kinds of transformational gifts are rare in all of higher education, and Sam’s gift is a tremendous vote of confidence in the future of Dickinson.”
Rose has long been passionate about fostering social change and sees scholarship giving as a way to “level the playing field” for students from all economic backgrounds, and he’s done just that for more than 200 students already—and many more in the future—through his endowed scholarship.
This gift, he notes, serves as a vote of confidence in Dickinson’s ability to change the lives of students through its useful liberal-arts education for the common good. Rose also firmly believes in supporting Dickinson’s mission of empowering future leaders and problem-solvers to meaningfully contribute to the world.
“I am pleased to make this timely gift to Dickinson,” Rose says. “My generation has not done a good job with running the world. We have failed with regards to climate, race, animal life, poverty and even the government, so I am happy to help an institution that helps students address complex issues such as these and, in so doing, to better the world.”
Currently, 82% of Dickinson students receive financial aid from the college in order to afford tuition. With an average institutional grant of $36,898 per student, Dickinson’s investment in that aid exceeds the funding available in the college’s financial aid endowment. This means that the college increasingly relies on gifts like Sam’s—as well as smaller gifts from alumni, parents and friends pooled together—to offer the Dickinson experience to the large majority of students.
“We are so thankful to donors like Sam who make Dickinson possible for so many of our students,” says Ensign. “Their transformational impact on the college and the world is truly life-changing.”
Learn more about the impact of scholarship gifts at Dickinson.
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Published February 3, 2021