Creating opportunities

The Alfred I. duPont Foundation put seven new college scholarships on the table and the Gulf Coast Community College Foundation doubled down.

During a ceremony Friday morning at the GCCC Gulf/Franklin Center, the Alfred I. duPont Foundation announced a donation of $100,000 to create seven endowed scholarships at the Gulf/Franklin Center.

And the board of trustees of the GCCC Foundation, in keeping with its long-standing partnership with the duPont Foundation, voted to match the generosity with another $100,000 for an additional seven scholarships.

“This is a wonderful opportunity for our current students and our future students,” said Brenda Galloway, director of the Gulf/Franklin Center. “This will allow so many of our students to achieve their dreams.

“This is a joy of generosity that will allow our students to achieve an education as a nurse.”

The donations have a specific focus, creating the Health Science endowed scholarship program, said Robert Nedley, chairman of the board of trustees of the Alfred I. duPont Foundation.

The goal, Nedley said, is two-fold; providing scholarship opportunities in medical fields and bolstering the profile of the Gulf/Franklin Center.

The priority for awarding the scholarships will be focused on students living from Mexico Beach to Franklin County and pursuing an education in medicine, specifically nursing.

Students graduating from Port St. Joe High School and Franklin County High School will be given top priority for scholarships as will employees working at any of five major health care centers in the region: Weems Memorial Hospital in Franklin County, Sacred Heart Hospital on the Gulf in Gulf County and HealthSouth, Gulf Coast Medical Center and Bay Medical Center in Bay County.

“Education is one of our big areas for donations,” Nedley said. “Thirty to forty percent of our budget goes to education. I hope this will bring Gulf and Franklin counties closer to the Gulf/Franklin Center and the possibilities that are here.”

The Gulf/Franklin Center has had a Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN) program for 10 years and is seeking to expand its options.

Nedley said one of his hopes is that, for example, a LPN working at Sacred Heart or Weems wishing to pursue a Registered Nurse (RN) certification would help fuel a need for a new RN program at the Gulf/Franklin Center.

“We see so much change today, but until Jesus Christ comes back the sick will always be with us and will always need proper care,” Nedley said. “Maybe what we do here today will help that come about ... Maybe we can help get a RN program here.”

Tom Gibson, representing the GCCC Foundation, accepted Nedley’s check and announced the college foundation’s desire to match the gift.

“That was wonderful,” Nedley said. “That was a generous thing for them to do for us and the community.”

For some three decades the GCCC Foundation and the Alfred I. DuPont Foundation – created in 1936 with a donation of $50,000 from Jesse Ball DuPont in order to honor her husband who died the previous year – have been partners in creating scholarship opportunities at GCCC.

Today, the duPont Foundation has $34.6 million in the bank and donates on average $1.7 million each year, an average of  $5,000 per day.

And the foundation, which largely focuses its donations on the elderly, sick and needy, has donated $1.165 million to the GCCC Foundation in the past 30 years, creating 118 scholarships that with matches from the college foundation have meant 231 scholarship opportunities this school year alone.

“This partnership has worked on the belief that the opportunity for an education should not be denied on the basis of financial straits,” Gibson said. “The (college) foundation has gotten a lot of support from the Alfred I. DuPont Foundation over the years and we saw this as an opportunity to strengthen our relationship.

“And the focus (on health care), I think, is important.”