By Monica Friedlander

Some of UC Berkeley’s most deserving and financially disadvantaged students will have a chance to pursue their educational dreams thanks to a $500,000 pledge from the Hearst Foundations in California.

The William Randolph Hearst Endowment Challenge Grant for Undergraduate Scholarships (also known as the Hearst Fund) will be leveraged as a matching opportunity for Berkeley alumni and friends. The University will seek to establish four named endowments, each in the amount of $125,000, from private donors. Income generated from each of the named endowments will be matched by the income from the Hearst Fund, starting next year. The combined incomes will create a single scholarship for each of four students in the College of Letters and Science.

“This is very exciting news for undergraduate education at Berkeley,” said John McKee, dean of Development and College Relations for the College of Letters and Science, which helped secure the scholarships for UC Berkeley. “The Hearst Foundations have been very generous in their support of our university. These scholarships will preserve Berkeley's standard of excellence by making it possible for students who might otherwise not be able to afford an education at Berkeley to pursue their highest aspirations."

“The Hearst Scholarships are especially important during these bleak economic times,” said Cruz Grimaldo, assistant director of the Financial Aid and Scholarships Office. “The cost of education is outstripping scholarship resources, so it is extremely heartening that the Hearst Foundations’ challenge grant will help Berkeley preserve access for the best students, regardless of family means.”

The Hearst Foundations, dating back to the mid-1940s, are national philanthropies operating independently of the Hearst Corporation. They help organizations and institutions working in the fields of education, health, culture, and social service — areas that reflect the interests of the late publisher and philanthropist William Randolph Hearst.
 
The Hearst legacy of philanthropy at Berkeley dates back more than a century. During the past few decades alone the Hearst Foundations have made important contributions to Berkeley with significant gifts to the Pacific Film Archive, the School of Journalism, the Bancroft Library, the Phoebe Apperson Hearst Museum of Anthropology, and the College of Engineering.

For more information about the Hearst Scholarships, contact Mary Almestad (643-2227) in the College of Letters and Science.