BETHUNE COOKMAN COLLEGE BUILDS TWO SCHOLARSHIP HOUSES
PARTNERSHIP WITH SOUTHERN SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION
Bethune-Cookman College broke ground Monday afternoon on 2 scholarship houses designed to foster community responsibility and civic leadership among its residents.
The houses were built through a partnership between the university and the Southern Scholarship Foundation, the 2 houses will be situated next to the Living Learning Center on Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. on the northeast side of the college campus.
The houses are both 2 story dwellings that will house 17 students each. Students residing in the houses will have to maintain a 3.0 GPA with a focus on leadership and civic engagement. They will share in cleaning, cooking, and administrative responsibilities in the houses.
“These scholarship houses will be a day-to-day application of the International Institute for Civic Participation and Social Responsibility,” said Bethune-Cookman University President Dr. Trudie Kibbe Reed. “As well as their academic work and research the student’s real-life experiences will complement the institute.”
The partnership with the Southern Scholarship Foundation was made possible through gifts from the Kleist Foundation and the families of trustees Dr. Eugene Zimmerman, Alexis Pugh and Mary Alice Massey.
The Southern Scholarship Foundation is an organization that assists low-income students attend university by providing twenty seven houses at Florida institutions. The B-CC houses will be the first to require a community service commitment. “This is an expansion of expectations for those who participate and that is directly tied to Dr. Reed’s leadership,” said Cindy Michelson, foundation president.
Bethune-Cookman is a comprehensive college, which offers degrees in liberal arts as well as professional fields, such as education and nursing and business. A United Methodist Church-affiliated school, the University has a international and diverse student population of more than 2,900 and a solid reputation for academic excellence and community service. As evidence of its outstanding program, the College has been listed in the Templeton Honor Roll of Character Building Colleges and Universities, and it was ranked by Black Enterprise magazine as one of the “Top fifty” schools in the nation for black students. B-CC is one of 10 charter member colleges of Project Pericles, a program to create civic leadership and involvement on its member campuses.