Manatee Review

Edward Waters College issued the following announcement.

Edward Waters College (EWC) is ecstatic to announce that they are the recent recipients of $150,000 from the Jessie Ball DuPont Fund to support the continuation of the Honors College at Edward Waters. This latest gift brings the cumulative investment from the Fund in support of this initiative to $250,000 since the establishment of the Honors College at Edward Waters in 2018. The gift further underscores EWC’s forward moving trajectory and substantial progress towards heightening its academic profile and institutional competitiveness by supporting high academic excellence, scholarly achievement, and overall student success.

“This significant investment from the Jessie Ball DuPont Fund will be used to continue bolstering both the academic prowess and related experiential and scholarly opportunities for our Edward Waters students and we are very thankful to the Fund for their tremendous benevolence in support towards that end,” said EWC President, Dr. A. Zachary Faison, Jr. “The Tiger Scholars represented in our Honors College represent a cadre of the some of the brightest and most brilliant collection of young scholars in the nation and we are exceedingly proud that they are continuing to burnish the superlative reputation of high scholarship that marks our venerable institution,” President Faison said.

Having welcomed its second full cohort in Fall 2020 (Beta Cohort), the Honors College at EWC was envisioned by President Faison with a distinctive emphasis upon the development of a seminal institutional vehicle to incubate, promote, and support exceptional scholarly student achievement. The program engages students in unique curricular and co-curricular experiences consisting of an honors curriculum featuring small classes with engaged learning led by EWC’s talented and dedicated faculty; a residential experience and co-curricular programming which provide global, leadership, and service opportunities; and a meaningful and impactful undergraduate research/scholarship experience. The Honors curriculum also includes Honors General Core Sections, Honors Seminars, Honors Internship Experience, and a Honors Thesis. Accordingly, the Honors College at Edward Waters serves as an institutional pacemaker towards that end and its attendant cohorts reinforce EWC’s high commitment to excellence and opportunity for all students.

“The Jessie Ball DuPont Fund is pleased to continue supporting the mission of the EWC Honors College to provide enhanced academic and experiential learning opportunities to a diverse group of students, and to build pathways to future opportunities for these students,” said Mari Kuraishi, President, Jessie Ball DuPont Fund. “The EWC Honors College is an important program to foster an inclusive academic and social community for students coming from around the country to live, learn and contribute in Jacksonville.”

Now in its second full year, the Honors College at Edward Waters first cohort of 20 students (Alpha Cohort) boasted a 4.01 high school grade point average and an average 1127 on the SAT while hailing from multiple states throughout the country and from abroad as the program attracted students from both Nigeria and Guyana.

In fall 2020, the program welcomed its second cohort of 20 Tiger Scholar students (Beta Cohort) as this diversely talented group of burgeoning scholar-leaders enrolled at EWC with extraordinarily high credentials with an average high school grade point average of 4.0 and a nearly 1100 average score on the SAT. The Honors College at EWC was again successful in enrolling students from throughout the nation while simultaneously extending its international attractiveness quotient in welcoming scholars from as distant as Belgrade, Serbia.

“Our goal in Academic Affairs is to provide all of our students with quality educational experiences, in the context of a dynamic community of learners with both faculty and students exemplifying a shared commitment to academic excellence and our Honors College is certainly representative of that laudable effort,” said Dr. Donna H. Oliver, Provost & Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs.

“We are so pleased that the support garnered from the Jesse Ball duPont Fund has enabled us to provide the finest educational opportunities possible for receptive and talented college students of high academic aspiration who are eager to learn, lead, and serve,” Oliver said.

Original source can be found here.