Share the News









Johns Hopkins is making another power play to support its undergraduate students, this time for those who are among the first in their families to attend college.

University president Ronald Daniels and his wife, associate lecturer and Clinic for Public Health Law and Policy director Joanne Rosen, today announced they will help fund a $1 million financial aid endowment for incoming first-generation college students. Half of that money will come straight from Daniels and Rosen, with the rest coming from a 2015 award of $500,0000 from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

JHU will also match the endowment gift for undergraduate aid. The school said in a release that it will be enough money in total to cover the financial needs of four undergrads in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and the Whiting School of Engineering.

Daniels invoked his family’s history – the second time he’s done so in the last month – to explain his and his wife’s reasoning for founding the new Daniels-Rosen First Generation Scholars Fund:

My own father and his siblings were the first generation of his family able to pursue a university education. Access to a transformative education made a profound difference in his life and in his children’s lives. The opportunity to help others achieve their educational, personal and professional aspirations through a Johns Hopkins education is deeply meaningful for Joanne and me.

Rosen, who lectures on health policy and management and is a human rights lawyer specializing in regulation of reproductive health and sexual orientation, said in the announcement that she and Daniels have a commitment to creating such opportunities for students.

“We have seen firsthand, in our own families and in the experiences of our students, the ways that education can change the trajectory and meaning of people’s lives. We are thrilled to help offer future members of the Johns Hopkins family that same opportunity,” she said in a statement.

The gift brings the total amount of money raised for JHU’s and Johns Hopkins Hospital’s seven-year-old “Rising to the Challenge” capital campaign to $4.6 billion. They’re expecting to hit their target of $5 billion by June of next year.