NBCU Academy grants student scholarship fund to Sacred Heart University
Through its NBCU Academy program, the NBCU News Group awarded the Sacred Heart University’s Ferré Rangel School of Communication (ECFR, in Spanish) a donation as part of a new partnership to support the education of communicators who contribute to the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion in society.
Sacred Heart University is one of 13 academic partners that will receive part of a $2 million investment from NBCU Academy in 2022, the school announced.
“The grant will go to scholarships for students who demonstrate academic excellence and who can produce content that reflects diversity in communities and provides visibility to the current challenges in this area,” said ECFR Director Gabriel Paizy.
“Other funds will be allocated for the purchase of technical equipment or payment for human resources that support the development of skills in students and facilitate the creation of said content,” he said, adding that the financial aid, which will begin to be distributed from August 2022 until December 2023.
The funds will benefit new ECFR students, both at the bachelor’s and master’s degree levels.
A total of 20 scholarships of $1,200 each will be awarded to full-time students with a high school or university GPA of 3.5 or higher, who have participated in some social impact effort and who submit a proposal on how to promote issues of diversity (audiovisual productions, podcasts, advertisements, public relations plans, and journalistic investigative reports, among others).
A total of 63 scholarships of $2,000 each will be awarded to students from all ECFR’s undergraduate and graduate programs who are in their junior or senior year (in the case of bachelor’s degrees) or in their last academic quarter (in the case of master’s degrees), whose academic average is 3.5 or higher and who submit an essay on issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
“Through these efforts, students will be reinforcing their sense of solidarity and empathy with diverse communities in our society, while developing a vision of the world through their international experiences that will help them understand the cultural, political, economic, and social idiosyncrasies of other nations,” said Sara E. Tolosa-Ramírez Sacred Heart University’s vice president of development and university relations.
“They will contribute, in turn, to disseminating these experiences and learning so that other people can have better visibility and clarity of the challenges faced by these foreign communities in their struggles for equality, justice, and peace,” she said.
In addition, as part of the agreement with NBCU Academy, students will be able to participate in recruitment activities for internships and employment opportunities at the company.
In this way, Sacred Heart University joins the group of 30 academic partners of NBCU Academy, NBCUniversal News Group’s multi-platform journalism training and development program that serves students from four-year universities, community colleges and accredited programs.
“The way we gather and consume news is consistently evolving. Through NBCU Academy, we’re forging a generation of diverse journalists that are ahead of the curve on media technologies,” said Yvette Miley, senior vice president of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion for the NBCUniversal News Group.
