Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google

Wentworth Institute of Technology President Announces $10M Scholarship Challenge

  • 10/28/19

BOSTON, MA – For many students, tuition costs remain an insurmountable barrier to higher education. Wentworth Institute of Technology President Mark A. Thompson, Ph.D., says he wants to help those students with a $10-million scholarship matching challenge called ASAP—for Advancing Student Access and Potential. Thompson announced the initiative as part of his October 18 inauguration as Wentworth’s fifth president.

The first economist to serve as the university’s chief executive, Thompson left college as a young man and worked for four years as a police officer in Eastham, MA, before returning to school, earning three degrees and embarking on a career in higher education. “College was my ticket to a lifetime of security and success,” says Thompson. “It transformed me. I want everyone who has the interest and motivation to have the same opportunity as I did.”

With the ASAP challenge, Wentworth aims to increase the amount of permanent financial aid available to students. The university for the first time will be taking $5 million of unrestricted funds from its endowment to match dollar-for-dollar the creation of new endowed scholarships of $25,000 or more, thereby doubling their impact for students and expanding the school’s overall scholarship endowment to more than $35 million. Under ASAP, the university will also match gifts of $25,000 or more that are made to existing scholarship funds.

Endowed scholarships work like a savings account; the principal is invested, and students receive support from the income generated from that investment. Because the principal remains untouched, these gifts keep on giving for future generations of students.

This ASAP initiative will run through June of 2021, or until all $5 million in matching funds is expended. The funds will help to:

  • create high-school-to-college pathways for Boston youth;
  • attract more women and underrepresented populations to Wentworth’s engineering, science, design, and management programs;
  • fill gaps between federal and state grants, and merit-based funding;
  • support students who may need more time to complete their college degrees; and
  • help students from lower-income or working-class families reduce their debt level at graduation.

People looking to learn more about the challenge can contact Paula S. Sakey, vice president, Institutional Advancement, at 617/989-4219 or [email protected].

Featured

  • Campus Safety Requires Using Every Resource Available

    Across the U.S., school and campus leaders are facing a security landscape that has changed dramatically over the past decade. Incidents on school property have increased in recent years, with several consecutive years setting record totals. According to analysis of data by CNN, dozens of shootings now occur on school grounds annually across K-12 and higher education environments.

  • Montclair State University Starts Construction on $120M STEM Building

    Montclair State University in Montclair, N.J., recently broke ground on a new $120-million Interdisciplinary Science Building, according to university news. The university partnered with HoK Architects for the project’s design, and it’s scheduled to open in time for the 2028–29 academic year.

  • Classical building columns display digital data streams

    The Campus Nervous System: Why Facilities Risk Is Now a Leadership Issue in Higher Education

    Facility performance now intersects with safety, compliance, on-campus experience, institutional reputation, and financial resilience. That places it firmly on the leadership agenda.

  • GeoCam and UCLA: Modernizing Campus Accessibility Mapping

    In early 2025, UCLA partnered with GeoCam to capture and modernize its pedestrian infrastructure data. The goal was ambitious but clear: to produce a high-accuracy, imagery-backed digital map of every sidewalk, pathway, ramp, and ADA-related feature on UCLA’s 419-acre campus.