News Staff Reporter
During a recent interview with the Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Mr. Herbert V. Kohler ’62 and Headmaster Shanahan, preliminary details were revealed to The News concerning Choate’s second major gift within 12 months.
According to a senior administrative source, an individual associated with a foundation is in the process of pledging. This source refrained from specifics since the gift has not yet been finalized and is still in the works.
Unlike the $6 million bequest that Choate received from Rosemary Hall alumna Mrs. Rebecca Tenney Agnew ’27, this gift will not go towards a capital project, but rather will go towards the school’s financial aid program.
The money will provide “significant support” to a new initiative to not only recruit students from Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and the heartland of the United States but also provide them with the necessary funds to attend Choate.
Choate has already started scoping out these locations in hopes of getting the program underway. According to Mr. Shanahan, Ms. Mary Pashley, has already focused on recruiting from Africa, which will hopefully begin next year. Recruiting from the Middle East will be tougher and will not occur for at least two years. However, Mr. Shanahan and Mr. Kohler were optimistic, saying that Mr. Eric Widmer, the outgoing headmaster of Deerfield Academy and rising headmaster of King’s Academy in Jordan, was eager to support “collaborations between Choate and Jordanian kids and families.”
Part of the financial aid program will provide full scholarships to some of the recruited students who chose to attend Choate; the others will be given partial scholarships. A final part of the donation will support faculty staffing of the program. The gift is slated to be large enough to support this extensive program for a total of six to eight years.
This new initiative, details of which should be announced shortly, will have no effect on the Icahn Scholars Program or presumably other financial aid program already in place at school.
