Scholarship News From Around the Country

A message from our President, Paul Gunther

There is no doubt that after the general goal of extending programmatic outreach from all of our present nodes of operation, our Beaux-Arts Atelier has emerged as our most important education priority.  The inaugural class of 2012 graduates next month, following their term-ending drawing intensive in Rome; the class of 2013 is selected and will be announced to all of our constituents next month. One strategic outcome of the BAA is that its success is in turn building momentum for the overall continuing education calendar across the country, just as it is encouraging new institutional accredited partnerships about which you’ll be hearing more in coming weeks.

The foremost tactical goal in coming years is to cement the Atelier in place permanently and the best path to that vital end is the creation of scholarships.  At the end of the day that’s where the action lies.

Richard Driehaus propelled us on this front with his magnificent ten-year Driehaus Scholar program. Taconic Builders stepped up next along with Alfred and Jane Ross with namesake scholarships.

More recently the Northern California Chapter has very graciously voted to create an annual chapter scholarship reserved for a deserving Atelier student hailing from their region. The opportunity now yields to recruitment for next year with the chapter’s guiding hand. Please help spread the word, as all of us here will do.

Now the Utah Chapter, via its founding president Robert Baird, has announced a scholarship beginning immediately for Class of 2013 Utah-based student, Corey Strange. Again a wonderful precedent in the Beehive State.

And the latest tuition-assistance offering, at the 31st annual Arthur Ross Awards for Excellence in the Classical Tradition that took place this past Monday in Charles Follen McKim’s masterpiece University Club, I had the distinct honor of announcing that Roy Zeluck, in memory of his late brother and spirited business partner, Kevin, has created the Marc Appleton/Roy Zeluck Scholars Program.  The occasion was especially fitting as Marc was receiving the 2012 Board of Directors Honor; the announcement was thus a fitting lagniappe.

This new Appleton/Zeluck Fund consists of a $10,000 annual scholarship starting with the class of 2014, incoming next year, for an outstanding student candidate from Southern California to be recruited and recommended by a special chapter committee.

Over time, these scholars returning home will be able to teach ICAA classes based upon the unparalleled rigor of their yearlong Beaux-Arts Atelier training.  The inexorable decentralization of ICAA teaching is an organic and hopeful result.

All of us are grateful to Roy and to Kevin’s surviving example and the dynamic tribute they are making in honor of their friend and partner in building, Marc Appleton. It is thrilling news.

Join me please in praising these generous pioneers.

Please know that additional tuition funds are very much needed and can be awarded charitably by name and jurisdiction, among other criteria that the donor might wish to designate. It is the essential lifeblood of our unique teaching role in confronting the cultural amnesia that threatens the very fabric of who we are as a people best unified by shared values descending from common experiences and understanding.

And so take advantage of the sophisticated array of opportunities in the weeks ahead as the Institute's monthly calendar describes.