N.C. State alumni, Deborah and Joseph Gordon, donated $3 million to the University during spring break to make it easier, financially, for students from rural areas to attend the University.
The couple, which owns Care First Animal Hospital, said it felt that it was necessary to give back to the community.
Deborah Gordon said the idea for the program came from a trip she took to her hairdresser when they began discussing the possibility that for the first time in the history of the United States, children were in danger of being less educated than their parents.
From the salon chair, Deborah Gordon said she and her hairdresser came up with the idea that if a student could work and save enough money to entirely pay for his or her first semester at N.C. State, then perhaps a surrogate parent could, at the completion of a successful semester, refund the student. The student could then use that money to fund his or her second semester, and if he or she was again successful, he or she would again be refunded. This process would continue until the student graduated, debt free and having only paid the price of one semester.
“My passion is to make sure that students can graduate debt free,” Deborah Gordon said. “And a program like this would enable them to graduate debt free. This is starting in College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, but it’s my hope that other colleges and universities will adopt something similar.”
This was the beginning of the “Farm to Philanthropy” program, and the Gordons will be the first pair of “surrogate parents.”
Deborah Gordon said surrogate parents will be mentors who get to know the student. The number of surrogate parents a participant has will be determined by how much money each parent can help supply, Deborah Gordon said.
She said she hopes students who graduate after receiving aid from the program will want to give back.
“It’s basically founded on a pay-it-forward standpoint,” Deborah Gordon said.
She said the icing on the cake was hearing one of her own employee’s struggle to pay off student loans acquired during her time at a university.
“She shared with me that she accumulated $100,000 in debt for undergrad alone,” Deborah Gordon said. “I just don’t see how anyone could be right out of school with that level of debt and for me that made me more determined than ever to make this program work.”
Joseph Gordon, who served as student body president at N.C. State, said much of his inspiration came from a desire to serve North Carolina and the University.
He said his experience as student body president exposed him to great people who came before him and made sacrifices and contributions. This led him to think of ways in which he could do something to benefit those after him.
The program is aimed to help students from rural areas specifically, Joseph Gordon said, because educational options in these areas tend to be more limited than they are in urban areas.
One program that will benefit from the donation is ACT Supplemental Preparation In Rural Education Program, which is CALS program designed to help rural students improve their standardized test scores. Another program that will benefit is Student Transfer Enrollment Advising and Mentoring Program, an alternative admissions program where students will attend summer session two at N.C. State but will pursue their education elsewhere for one year.
If the students maintain a 3.0 GPA, they are automatically accepted into a CALS major, according to Sam Pardue, the associate dean and director of academic programs for CALS.
Pardue said applications for the program are not yet available, and the scholarship will be restricted to majors in CALS.
