Endowment Fund

As many of you likely recall from last year, our section designed and implemented an Endowment Fund to support scholarships for deserving students in our area. Our Section's Endowment Fund is set up to provide scholarships to High School seniors in the Atlanta area who intend to enter the aerospace field. The Council passed a detailed resolution outlining the structure of the Fund and a mechanism for distributing scholarships to deserving students.

We strongly believe that our new Endowment Fund will assist our Section in implementing some of the key purposes of the AIAA. The Mission Statement of the AIAA states that it is the mission of the AIAA to "[s]upport[] the educational process that brings into being future generations of aviation and space professionals ..." Similarly, the Constitution of the AIAA mandates, as one of the primary purposes of the AIAA, that the AIAA shall "… improve public understanding of the profession and its contributions, foster education in engineering and science..." The By-Laws expound on this mandate by stating that this purpose "…shall be accomplished by … [e]ffecting close cooperation with educational institutions to encourage high standards of technical education and to assist in the development of future scientists and engineers." We believe that our new Endowment Fund is fully in line with these objectives and goals of the AIAA.

The detailed Resolution passed by the Council makes clear that the Fund will:

…offer one or more scholarships, or other appropriate monetary awards, to one or more deserving students each year of the Fund's existence, at the discretion of the Atlanta Section of the AIAA…. The primary goal of this Fund is to provide a service to our community and to promote the strength of Aerospace profession.

As set out in the Resolution establishing the Endowment Fund, the Fund is not funded from the general AIAA treasury and is certainly not funded from our AIAA dues. The Endowment Fund is completely separate from the other money used to run our Section. Conversely, money received for the Endowment Fund is kept completely separate from general Section monies and can only be used for Fund purposes.

Some of you may be interested in the criteria that will be used to distribute the scholarships. Basically, a Selection Committee will be established. The Selection Committee consider the applications for the scholarships and will pick the scholarship recipients without knowledge of the scholarship applicants' identity. The criteria used to select scholarship recipients is also specified in the Endowment Fund Resolution passed by the Council. The Resolution specifies that:

Generally, the Selection Committee should select recipients who are "well-rounded" as well as intelligent. Breadth of personality and the extent of extracurricular activities are to be primary factors to consider. Grades and test scores, while important, should be assigned a secondary role in the consideration of who should receive the award[s]. To this end, it is suggested that [an] essay composed by the Applicant should be of primary importance. Creativity in the essay response and the effectiveness with which the Applicant communicates should be important considerations. The Selection Committee should focus on finding a candidate who will be a benefit to the profession and will add refreshing and creative ideas to our profession. The Selection Committee should have a preference to students planning to attend either The Georgia Institute of Technology or Southern Polytechnic State University.

This year, we do not foresee being able to distribute any scholarships. Before scholarships can be distributed, the Fund must reach an appropriate level of funding. We hope to begin providing scholarships in the very near future, and this is where you can help. The key to the success of our Endowment Fund is contributions. We always welcome and encourage individual tax-deductible contributions*. Additionally, we are continuing to pursue corporate contributions and are considering a variety of fund raising activities.

We are very excited about this new program and hope that each of you share our excitement about this opportunity for our section to build interest in aerospace technologies and to serve our community. As always, we are open to any comments or suggestions. We will keep you informed of developments in our Section's Fund. If you should have any questions about the Fund, please do not hesitant to contact us. Feel free to contact any officer on the contacts page or send email to endowment@aiaa-atlanta.org.

* Please see your tax professional to confirm that in your particular situation, a contribution such as this is fully tax deductible.

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