Century Challenge 2022

THE

Century CHALLENGE

What will you make possible?

Support BU students, and we’ll double your impact

A message from President Robert A. Brown Greetings from Boston, where our campuses are full of activity. With a bold strategic plan for 2030 in place, we at BU are reaching high while keeping focused on one of our most important priorities: ensuring that the University remains accessible to the world’s most ambitious and qualified students.

I recently announced my decision to step down as BU’s president after 18 years. During my presidency I have had the pleasure of meeting many of our generous supporters and have worked alongside them to transform BU into the remarkable institution it is today.

Expanding access to BU has been one of our proudest shared achievements. We have substantially increased our commitment to undergraduate student need-based financial aid, which has had a tremendous impact on the diversity of our student body. We estimate that our domestic freshman class includes 25 percent Pell grant recipients, 25 percent first-generation students, and 33 percent underrepresented minority students, while our acceptance rate hit an all-time low of 14 percent.

Why have we been able to offer more aid? In part because of the Century Challenge: a comprehensive, long-term strategy for building financial aid resources at BU. I announced this program in 2010 with the promise that, when you establish an endowed undergraduate scholarship fund, the University will match the income paid out from that fund for a full century— doubling the good that is done in your name.

Since its inception, more than 170 donors have established Century Challenge scholarships.

This is real progress. But we have a long way to go toward our goal of meeting the full need of all students—and we can’t get there alone. It will take time, and it will take bold and remarkable acts of generosity.

Building our endowment for undergraduate financial aid is critical to the continued ascent of this great institution and to the success of generations of students. The Century Challenge is our shared commitment with you to make this future possible. I hope you will join us.

Sincerely,

Robert A. Brown President

“ Debt is such a burden on so many people, and these scholarships allow us to go above and beyond for others and for ourselves.”

Meet Century Challenge Scholar Julia

Julia Handfield (CGS’20, Sargent’22) Recruited to play softball at BU, Julia Handfield pitched for four years and adapted to a schedule packed with training, games and practices, classes, and studying. Blending sports and academics is second nature for her.

“Athletics is what took me here, but the more I discovered BU, the more I appreciated the world-class education they offer,” says Handfield, a health science major who plans to attend nursing school.

She was delighted to receive the C.A. Lance Piccolo Athletics Scholarship for student athletes. “It has definitely helped me save money and put some money away for nursing school,” she says. “There’s a longer-term impact here: Studentloan debt is just so high and so common, and any opportunity to have that decreased or reduce that burden has a huge impact on students like me.”

Handfield is drawn to cardiac and ER nursing, which both require the teamwork and fast thinking she’s honed on the pitcher’s mound.

“You stand alone on the field, but at the end of the day, you’re all a team,” she says. “The game doesn’t work unless there are nine players on the field and players on the bench working behind the scenes to keep the operation moving. There’s a lot you can take out of a sport and translate into everyday life.”

She notes that long before she’d decided on a career in nursing, she counted seven nurses in her neighborhood in Auburn, Mass. “I don’t have any family members who are doctors or nurses, but I am surrounded by plenty of nurses in my life. We always joke that there’s something in the water on our street.”

Why accept the challenge?

To give life-changing access to a BU education.

An excellent college education is expensive. Critical voices ask, and families wonder: Is it worth it?

Yes. Especially when the degree comes from Boston University.

First, there are all the intangible benefits of college: getting access to the time and tools for self-discovery, being immersed in new networks, practicing teamwork, and undergoing personal transformations.

The dollars-and-cents view? People who earn a bachelor’s degree have significantly higher earnings and lower unemployment rates throughout their lifetimes than those who don’t—and those with advanced degrees earn even more.

Expanded access to college benefits society, too. Higher education is essential to our collective advancement, in nearly every field, from medicine to space exploration to international relations.

Here at BU, we create the context for personal and even societal transformation. Our faculty set high standards and hold our students to them. Our students, meanwhile, do their part: In addition to being smart, talented, and purposeful, they make up one of the most global of student communities, anywhere. They choose from among more than 300 programs of study and join more than 400 student clubs. Boston makes its special contribution, too, providing a stimulating urban context and a gateway to the wider world.

Our unique formula works: •

94 percent of our graduates find employment (or continue their education, or pursue military service) within six months of graduation.

•

BU graduates rank 14th in the US for employability among recruiters and CEOs.

•

BU graduates have among the highest loan-repayment rates of any student cohort, anywhere.

In other words, they have the means to meet their obligations—they hold good jobs—and they are motivated to do so.

These good results come about only if bright, ambitious young people can get access to BU in the first place, no matter what their family’s economic circumstances. Access, in turn, hinges on BU’s ability to provide enough financial aid to those who need it.

“ It means a lot to know that someone outside of our circle of family and friends really believes in us and in the power of education and is willing to invest in our futures.

Connecting us to donors is something that BU has done so wonderfully.”

Meet Century Challenge Scholar Natalie

Natalie Cisneros (Pardee’23) Natalie Cisneros connected deeply with her freshman writing seminar, Equity and Education.

The class, which covered the challenges of access to learning, covered ground she knew well as the first college student in her family.

“That was an amazing class to take, seeing my own experiences reflected in the things we were reading and the stories we were hearing, and also having the space to share my own experiences with my peers,” says Cisneros, the daughter of Ecuadorian immigrants.

“Professor [Julie] Baer was really generous beyond the classroom,” she says, “always connecting me to opportunities and clubs I could join and opportunities in the greater Boston community that would help my career, because she understood how important it is to create that support network for first-generation students.”

That support includes the scholarship Cisneros received from the Ralph H. Groce III Scholarship Fund. “It took such a great weight off my family’s and my shoulders to know that I could go to an institution like BU and be able to graduate without debt,” she says. “It’s given me the freedom to imagine doing more school. And I have the flexibility to do so because of the scholarship.”

Cisneros, who is majoring in international relations, will focus on immigration issues if she attends law school and migration studies if she opts for graduate school. “I hope to continue the mission of the people who have supported me and continue to support education for others,” she says.

Why accept the challenge?

Because it opens their futures.

Even a modest debt load limits students’ choices—in school, and sometimes for years after.

Our students should be able to study what they truly want to study. Our graduates should be able to choose careers that align with their interests and beliefs. They should be able to buy homes and support families.

Another reason? Most people understand that increased financial aid leads to a more diverse student body. What they may not know is that academic excellence increases in parallel with diversity.

The Class of 2026 is excellent, academically: •

Their average high school GPA was 3.9 (on a 4.0 scale)

•

Our acceptance rate has dropped dramatically: from 70.8 percent in 2002 to 14 percent in 2022.

The domestic Class of 2026 is also BU’s most diverse ever, racially and socioeconomically.

•

33 percent come from underrepresented groups.

•

25 percent are first-generation college students.

•

About 1 in 4 are Pell Grant recipients.

Increased excellence and diversity are a direct, deliberate result of our increased investment in financial aid over time.

Financial aid means access. Access means opportunity. Opportunity is everything.

“ These scholarships help students who have the drive, the passion, to push themselves to learn but may just be struggling financially.

Maybe they need a bit of help to access those opportunities.”

Meet Century Challenge Scholar William

William (Asafe) Penha (MET’22) After completing two years of general study at a Florida college, William Penha was eager to transfer to BU, not far from his Framingham, Mass., home, to study computer science. He didn’t think BU offered scholarships to transfer students, so he was happy to be proven wrong.

The scholarship he received has not only helped him financially but also prompted him to be a more motivated and focused student.

“It’s pushed me to keep up my studies because it’s easy to slip and get a little bit lazy with your grades,” he says.

Penha, the son of immigrants and the first in his family to attend college, plans to pursue a career in artificial intelligence research and development. He’s interested in logic and

intellectual challenges, and he feels that Boston, a hub for technology companies and innovators, is the right place to be for jobs and internships.

Penha already has some career experience; he worked full time in Florida as a help-desk technician and was quickly promoted to a technology administrator.

He’s grateful for the financial support that helped him complete his undergraduate education.

“These scholarships help students who have the drive, the passion, to push themselves to learn but may just be struggling financially,” he says.

“Maybe they need a bit of help to access those opportunities. You never know when one person who you help will end up creating something or advancing the world to a new level.”

Why accept the challenge?

Because it builds the endowment: the key to BU’s long-term success.

The Boston University endowment is made up of individual funds, many of which are designated by their donors for specific purposes, such as scholarships or professorships.

The investment committee of the Board of Trustees manages the endowment, balancing the need for immediate revenue with the necessity of preserving assets for the future. In their first years endowed funds “distribute” what might seem to be a modest amount for use—around $40,000 in the first year of a $1 million fund’s existence, for example. This amount can grow quickly, especially in times of strong market returns. For example, a $1 million fund created in 2000 would today distribute more than $50,000 every year.

For donors, endowed funds have many advantages. They provide the opportunity to honor loved ones, create legacies, and fund causes and programs they care about well beyond a lifetime— in essence, for as long as BU exists. Family members and friends are welcome to add to existing endowments. And donors often have opportunities to meet and correspond with beneficiaries of their support, creating meaningful relationships, over and over again.

At approximately $3.4 billion in 2021, BU’s endowment is significant, but actually quite small compared to that of its peers, when leveraged to support our over 30,000 undergraduate and graduate students.

This has challenging consequences when it comes to financial aid.

At BU in 2021, only about $14 million was generated for undergraduate financial aid from gifts and the endowment—a mere fraction of our total 2021–2022 aid budget of $380.5 million.

It takes a remarkable culture of philanthropy to build an endowment that fully meets the need of our students. But even if BU is relatively late to this game, it is a game we must play—and win.

“ In whatever way you can, like my grandpa and father, just try to put good in the world.”

Meet a Century Challenge donor

John DiGiovanni (Questrom’89, Parent Sargent’21)

John DiGiovanni (Questrom’89, Parent Sargent’21) President, Trinity Property Management Donor, with his wife, Anne; sister Catherine Esposito (Questrom’84, LAW’87, Parent CAS’24, Questrom’24); and other family members of the Louis F. DiGiovanni (LAW’52) Century Challenge Scholarship On one of my office walls is a portrait of my grandfather, Antonio. With no formal training, he left Italy for America as a teenager, and subsequently worked as a landscaper while raising 10 children. On another wall is an article about my father, Louis, who attended Notre Dame on the GI Bill, earned a law degree at BU, and then taught at the University for a quarter-century.

When I was a kid, we would visit Grandpa every Sunday. He was always joking with my dad, calling him “the professor.” But you could see how pleased and proud he was of Dad’s education. He used to say, “They can take the shirt off your back, but they can’t take what you have in your mind.”

At BU, my dad had a job as custodian of the law library, and he often said that we’re all just

custodians—we’re here to take care of things and people and ideals. An endowed scholarship is one way to do that; it’s a form of stewardship. The story of this scholarship starts from a fellow that came here in 1913—more than a century ago. And while an endowment can seem like it takes a while to have a big impact, their work took a lifetime, too. I’m not qualified to teach like my dad, and I’m in a different place than my grandfather, so what I can do is be the third step—put some of their toil toward the education of the next generations, and I can celebrate them along the way.

People would often tell my dad that he was a selfmade man. He rejected that notion, and then he would mention the people who helped him along the way. Hopefully, one impact of this scholarship is that those who receive it remember that and go on to take care of others, in whatever field they go into. And that contribution doesn’t need to be monetary. What you’re doing is trying to put good in the world.

Why accept the challenge?

Because our goal is very ambitious—but within reach.

Let’s start with the good news—and there is good news.

Thanks to the strong support of our alumni and friends, along with substantial funding from our operating budget, BU is currently able to offer aid packages—usually a combination of grants and loans—that meet the full need of most of our undergraduates.

This co-investment between BU and its donors has led to hugely important changes in our financial aid policies: In 2017, we began meeting the full need without loans of our students with the most need—those who qualify for a federal Pell Grant. And starting with the 2020 freshman class, we began to meet the full need of all domestic first-time students.

In short, most students who today are accepted to BU should not have to turn us down for financial reasons. Some call this “need-aware” admissions.

Good, but not good enough. Over time, BU will work to achieve the standard set by the world’s most elite institutions: to meet the full need of all students, as often as possible without loans.

Ideally, we’ll do so in a way that consumes much less of our operating budget, so that we can make needed investments in our faculty and facilities.

This is an ambitious goal, but it’s not a pipe dream. Those institutions that have achieved it have far larger endowments per student than BU—resources that they have amassed through decades (and even centuries) of support from generous donors.

Snapshot: A Century Challenge Fund’s impact over time Sample endowment established 6/30/2000

Original gift amount

$100,000

$500,000

$1,000,000

Cumulative earnings

$231,036

$1,155,179

$2 ,310,358

Ending value on 6/30/21

$177,446

$887,232

$1,774,463

Cumulative scholarships awarded

$153,589

$767,947

$1,535,894

Scholarships awarded in FY2021

$10,388

$51,941

$103,883

Original gift amount

$100,000

$500,000

$1,000,000

Cumulative earnings

$154,241

$771,205

$1,542,410

Ending value on 6/30/21

$177,446

$887,232

$1,774,463

Cumulative scholarships awarded

$76,795

$383,974

$767,947

Scholarships awarded in FY2021

$5,194

$25,971

$51,941

Without Century Challenge Match Endowment established 6/30/2000

“ For me to receive the scholarship, it really made my decision clear that BU was the right place for me to be.”

Meet Century Challenge Scholar Selina

Selina Lim (CGS’22, Questrom’24) Brooklyn native Selina Lim thought she’d be attending a New York City college, but her plans changed immediately when she learned she’d been accepted to BU. She was especially enthusiastic about studying abroad as a freshman. Though the pandemic scuttled those plans, Lim nonetheless had an incredible first year.

“My professors have been amazing, and I’ve learned a lot, not just in the school environment, but also as a person,” she says. “Moving away from my family and going to Boston has made me a lot more mature. I’m very thankful for that.”

Lim is a first-generation college student and daughter of a hotel housekeeper and a driver.

Receiving the Professor Louis F. DiGiovanni (LAW’52) Scholarship greatly eased her financial burden. “My family doesn’t come

from much,” she says. “For me to receive the scholarship, it really made it clear that BU was the right place for me to be.”

At BU, Lim joined the Chinese Student Association and, in a quest to become more active, the rock-climbing club. She is still planning to study abroad, ideally during the summer before her senior year.

She hopes to transfer to the Questrom School of Business and major in business with a concentration in finance. Her brother, an accountant, encouraged her interest in business when he saw her excel at math. She might explore work in private equity, but for now she’s keeping her options open. “I don’t want to limit myself,” she says. “I want to be openminded about the opportunities there are.”

Accept the challenge.

Now is the time to be audacious, on behalf of our students. In that spirit, we have set a goal to raise $600 million through the Century Challenge. Here’s how to take part.

1. You make the gift. You can indicate a preference for undergraduates in a particular school or college, and you can give your scholarship the name of your choosing.

2. We make the match. Today, the endowment spending rate is approximately 4 percent.

An endowment of $750,000 will generate income of about $30,000, which—when combined with BU’s match—equals the cost of a year’s tuition. A $1 million fund will pay out about $40,000, and that sum, combined with BU’s match, equals the full cost of attending BU for a year, including room, board, and fees. In all cases, the Office of Financial Aid allocates the appropriate amount to a qualified student, and BU matches this payout in your name, every year, for 100 years after the establishment of your fund. Each year, you will receive a report on your endowed fund, as well as information about the student or students it supports.

3. The good is done—in your name. By raising $600 million through the Century Challenge, we will have an additional $24 million every year to direct to financial aid—enough, with the BU match, for full scholarships for about 600 students each year, or partial scholarships for many more. And since endowments are invested in ways intended to promote growth over time, they are likely to pay out more, and do even more good, over time.

For most recipients, financial aid is a gift that keeps on giving throughout their lifetime. An endowed scholarship keeps on giving for many lifetimes—effectively forever. And the Century Challenge makes it twice as easy for you to have a real impact on tomorrow.

There are 16,000 undergraduates at Boston University.

That’s 16,000 stories. And infinite potential.

What will you make possible?

For more information about the Century Challenge and how you can participate, please contact Josh Aiello, Vice President for Development 617-358-2286 jaiello@bu.edu