After meeting its $300 million goal in endowment for financial aid last month, the University may soon have a new, more targeted source of endowment funding.
The Duke University Latino Alumni Association is currently developing a Latino Scholarship Fund to provide need-based scholarships to incoming Latino students. The Financial Aid Office would extract money from the endowment to provide aid to Latino students.
"The reality is that the Latino population is going to need leadership and Duke wants those leaders to be trained at Duke," said Christopher Brandt, Trinity '00 and a Latino alumnus helping to spearhead the association's efforts. "This is a powerful tool for the admissions office."
DULAA began the scholarship fund for Latino students in 2004 and has solicited donations from the growing body of Latino alumni since that time, Brandt said.
So far, the fund has received gifts from close to 98 contributors and has grown to about $125,000, said Julian Sanchez, director of the Office of Intercultural Affairs, who serves as an adviser to DULAA. The goal for 2009 will be to grow the fund to about $250,000.
The scholarship fund, however, is not yet large enough to begin administering aid to incoming Latino students. Peter Vaughn, executive director of alumni and development communications, said the fund needs to reach a level where it yields income before it can begin to be awarded on the basis of need by the Financial Aid Office.
"I think that the alums who are developing this would like to see growth in the future," Sanchez said. "As more Latinos graduate from Duke and establish themselves in the professions, I think there's good potential for this to grow."
Although the scholarship is still in its infancy, Brandt said DULAA has high hopes for its expansion.
"In an ideal world, our goal is to emulate the [Reginaldo Howard Memorial Scholarship] program, though we're still in the womb, so to speak," he said.
The Reginaldo Howard annually provides five full merit scholarships to students of African heritage. But the program, which was established in 1976, also began as a small scholarship program, Sanchez said. Initially a $6,000 to $8,000 scholarship, it now fully funds the recipient's Duke education and room and board.
What distinguishes the Latino Scholarship Fund is that it is funded by alumni and it is need-based rather than merit-based.
"This is the first time that an alumni group has done that," Sanchez noted.
DULAA's efforts are crucial to building a Latino community at Duke, Brandt said.
"There is a lot of value included in having a diverse student body," he said. "It also happens that Latinos are the fastest growing demographic in the United States, and that's something that wasn't reflected in the Duke student body until very recently."
According to the College Board, Hispanics made up 6 percent of Duke's Class of 2012, compared to 11.5 percent at Stanford University and 9 percent at both Yale University and Princeton University.
Brandt said one of the challenges Duke faces when recruiting Latino students is that Durham is not a major urban center.
"When competing with Stanford or Columbia University, it's not naturally going to attract Latinos," he said. "Also, it's located in the South, which was not historically welcoming to people of different ethnicities and cultures."
Although the number of donors and the size of the scholarship have grown substantially since 2004, Brandt said he recognized that the Latino alumni community is fairly young and "not typically in the giving portions of their careers and lives." So the Latino Alumni Association plans to establish contacts in South Florida and other areas with large Hispanic populations in an effort to attract more funds.
Regina Long, associate director of development for Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, has faith in DULAA's ability to grow the scholarship and reach out to Latino students.
"[DULAA is] so concerned about making sure that Duke is getting as much of an opportunity as any other university at our level to produce leaders of Hispanic backgrounds," she said.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.