Virginia Tech doctoral students awarded $10,000 scholarship
The KPMG Foundation has awarded Joanna Garcia and Brandon Ater each a $10,000 KPMG Minority Accounting Doctoral Scholarship to pursue their doctorates at Virginia Tech. The scholarships, renewed for the 2012-2013 academic year, are renewable for up to five years at $10,000 a year.
Since 1994, the KPMG Foundation has awarded over $10 million to 309 African-American, Hispanic-American, and Native American scholars pursuing doctorate degrees, as part of its ongoing commitment to increase the representation of minority students and professors in business schools. Today, 184 of those scholarship recipients have successfully completed their doctoral program and are professors at universities throughout the country. Furthermore, 74 minorities are currently enrolled in accounting doctoral programs, and will take a place at the front of the classroom over the next few years.
Ms. Garcia and Mr. Ater began their doctoral studies at Virginia Tech in 2011. Bernard J. Milano, President of the KPMG Foundation, believes that Ms. Garcia and Mr. Ater “have demonstrated that dedication, hard work and ambition pay off. Like all our scholarship recipients, they are a key to our country’s future and we look forward to following their success after graduation.”
The KPMG Foundation Minority Accounting Doctoral Scholarship program aims to further increase the completion rate among African-American, Hispanic-American and Native American doctoral students in accounting, and is part of a larger commitment by the KPMG Foundation to increase minority representation not only in accounting programs at colleges and universities, but in the American work force.
The program complements The PhD Project, a separate 501(c) (3) organization that the KPMG Foundation founded in 1994, which recruits minority professionals from business into doctoral programs in all business disciplines. Since its inception in 1994, The PhD Project has increased the number of minority business professors from 294 to 1,158. The Project attacks the root cause of minority under-representation in corporate jobs: historically, very few minority college students study business as an entrée to a corporate career. Diversifying the faculty attracts more minorities to study business and better prepares all students to function in a diverse workforce.
– Submitted by Lisa King
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