Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli has established a second endowed scholarship fund at his alma mater, the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.
His $100,000 gift results in the Ricardo Martinelli Endowed Sigma Nu Leadership Scholarship, Fayetteville campus officials announced Tuesday. It will be awarded to students within the fraternity who are deemed to be outstanding leaders.
In tailoring his donation, Martinelli left some flexibility for the university and the fraternity in terms of the size and number of scholarships that will be awarded annually, said Jennifer Holland, a spokesman for The Office of Academic Scholarships and the Sigma Nu Alumni Board will make those decisions, she added.
Although predicting the annual yield on an endowment is not an exact science, university officials have said they typically use an estimate of 4 percent for planning and budgeting.
In 2009, Martinelli was elected president of Panama.An active alumnus of UA, he has returned to campus often. In 2002, he received the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Arkansas Alumni Association. And he was a featured speaker at commencement May 11.
According to the university’s website, its relationship with Panama dates back to 1951, when the U.S. government commissioned it to forge an agricultural foreign mission in Panama.
“Although the mission ended in 1957, relationships between university professors and Panama continued for many years,” the 2011 entry reads. “As a result, Panamanian students such as Ricardo Martinelli came to the University of Arkansas to further their education. To date, the university has 25 alumni from the Republic of Panama.”
In 2009, the president, a 1973 UA graduate, established the Ricardo A. Martinelli Endowed Scholarship to help students from the Republic of Panama who want to enroll at the Fayetteville campus. He gave $100,000 toward the endowment, and UA matched it 100 percent.
Holland didn’t have further details on that program Tuesday, other than it is completely separate from the newer endowment program. She was able to find information that the older program has thus far helped at least one student, but a total number of beneficiaries wasn’t immediately available by late Tuesday afternoon.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 05/29/2013