The benefactors of the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville’s Sturgis Fellowships have given the campus a $3.1 million gift to help more undergraduate students study abroad.
The gift from the Roy and Christine Sturgis Education Trust in Dallas will establish the Roy and Christine Sturgis International Honors Program, the university announced Friday.
The gift is not an endowment, said UA’s development spokesman, Jennifer Holland, and is being pledged over a 20-year period, for about $155,000 per year.
“Each year of funding will support 10 fellowships for highly specialized student abroad and internship experiences,” according to a news release.
The gift will help the university work toward one of its institutional goals: to provide at least 25 percent of its graduates with study-abroad experiences during their undergraduate years by the university’s 2021sesquicentennial. About 15 percent of undergraduates studied abroad during the 2011-12 academic year, Holland said.
The gift also will help students compete for employment in international relations, academics, private industry and public service, according to the university.
A native of Kingsland, Ark., the late Roy Sturgis grew up among 10 children of an Arkansas farmer and homemaker, according to a history UA provided. In 1933, Sturgis married Christine Johns.
“Together, they amassed a $40 million fortune,” the university wrote in the release, after success in the timber, lumber and sawmill industries in Arkansas as well as other prosperous enterprises the couple owned.
Their philanthropy led to a gift in 1985 establishing the Sturgis Fellowship program, according to newspaper archives. The program currently has 26 Sturgis fellows.
Arkansas, Pages 14 on 09/28/2013