AUSTIN, Texas—Thanks to a $10 million gift from the Roy F. and Joann Cole Mitte Foundation, 100 undergraduate scholarships and 15 graduate fellowships will be available in 2003 to students of the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin.
The funding will be paired with $4 million previously pledged by San Antonio businessman Red McCombs to create 100 annual scholarships of $5,000 for undergraduates in the Business Honors Program, 15 similar fellowships for graduate business students and program enrichment activities for Business Honors.
“This extraordinary gift from the Mitte Foundation will enable scores of talented students to attend one of the nation’s premier business programs,” said Dr. Larry R. Faulkner, president of The University of Texas at Austin. “Over time, it will have an enormous positive impact on thousands of future leaders, the McCombs School of Business and The University of Texas at Austin. We applaud the Mitte Foundation for its vision and generosity.”
In honor of the gift, the university will rename the Business Honors Program and the program’s student service lobby for Roy F. and Joann Cole Mitte.
“The joint resources of the McCombs School of Business and the Mitte Foundation will create tremendous opportunities for class after class of the top business students in Texas and across the United States,” said Robert May, dean of the McCombs School of Business. “The generous support of the Mitte Foundation allows us to provide unparalleled financial and academic support to the top students for many years to come.”
May emphasized that the Mitte Foundation’s work is national in scope. In addition to its $10 million gift to the university, today the foundation announced gift commitments totaling $16.4 million to business schools at the University of Indiana and the University of Arizona. During the last four years, the Foundation also has funded Mitte scholars at Southwest Texas State University, Mays Business School at Texas AandM, Fischer College of Business at Ohio State University and Smeal College of Business Administration at the Pennsylvania State University. Over this short span, the foundation has established itself as the largest business scholarship program in the nation.
“Through these extraordinary gifts, the Mitte Foundation is reshaping the landscape of undergraduate business education,” said May. During the next two decades, May said, the foundation anticipates assisting more than 15,000 Mitte scholars.
“These gifts, in conjunction with our previous gifts, bring Mitte education contributions to nearly $70 million over the four-year life of the foundation,” said Scott Mitte, foundation executive director and son of Roy and Joann Mitte.
“The foundation’s greatest strength and its richest assets are the students we call Mitte Scholars,” he said. “The students are the torches and the alumni are the flame. Thanks to them, the Mitte legacy will burn brightly throughout the country.”
The Mitte family has been highly successful in insurance and real estate endeavors. Roy Mitte heads Financial Industries Corporation (FIC), a publicly traded company that is the holding company for the FIC Insurance Group. Mitte’s most recent real estate development was River Place Pointe, an office park in northwest Austin that houses FIC, the foundation and a variety of other major corporate entities.
For scholarship application details, contact Professor Eli Cox, program director, at (512) 471-5431.
For more information, contact Jim Kunetka, Office of Resource Development, (512) 475-9641, or David Lotz, Red McCombs School of Business, (512) 471-3957.
