Florida Atlantic University has a new endowment aimed at the students it calls first-generation scholars. The Gary Peters Family Foundation Inc. has given the Boca Raton university $2 million to create the Cecilia's Heart First-Generation Enrichment Endowment Fund, which will support the Kelly/Strul Emerging Scholars Program. FAU announced the gift on Oct. 27.

The program covers the full cost of college for students who are the first in their families to go, so they can finish without debt. The new money is for what happens around the classroom: mentoring, recognition and the kind of professional coaching that students with a parent who went to college often get at home.

What the gift pays for

According to FAU, the endowment will fund a Cecilia's Heart Student Recognition Program for scholars who show strong effort toward their academic and career goals. It will also pay for Dine with the Dean events, etiquette dinners, and résumé and networking sessions.

The fund is named for Cecilia Peters, a member of the Kelly/Strul board who has backed the program since it started. The university says she hosts each incoming class at her home every year and runs a book club led by the students.

How the program works

The Kelly/Strul Emerging Scholars Program was founded in 2017 by Boca Raton philanthropists Aubrey and Sally Strul, together with FAU President Emeritus John Kelly and his wife, Carolyn. It is open to first-generation students who are eligible for federal Pell Grants.

Scholars receive a full financial aid package that covers tuition, housing, books and meals. The aim is a degree in four years or less with no student debt. Alongside the money, students get mentoring, financial literacy training, internship opportunities and career-readiness support.

From four students to 30 a year

The first class had four students. FAU says the program now has 83 current scholars and 96 alumni, and this fall's incoming group of 30 is the largest it has admitted.

Graduates have gone to work in higher education, engineering, business, medicine and sports management, at employers including NextEra Energy, AmeriCorps and the U.S. Marine Corps. Others have continued to graduate school, including medical and doctoral programs.

Why it matters at FAU

The scale of the need on campus is large. FAU enrolls more than 32,000 undergraduate and graduate students, and the university says about a quarter of them are the first in their families to graduate from college. About 40 percent are eligible for Pell Grants, the federal aid reserved for students with the greatest financial need.

U.S. News & World Report ranks FAU in the top 30 nationally for social mobility, a measure of how well a school enrolls and graduates students from lower-income families, and in the top 25 for how its Pell Grant recipients graduate.

For students and families

The Kelly/Strul program is run through FAU's main campus at 777 Glades Road in Boca Raton. Students and families interested in it, or in other first-generation support at FAU, can start with the university's news announcement and the FAU Foundation, which manages gifts like this one.

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