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Academic Scholarships: Generations of Giving
(Message from the 1997 report from Dean Henry H. Perritt, Jr.)
Nothing about Chicago-Kent is quite as remarkable as the mighty bond that connects generation after generation of this school's friends and alumnae/i. Strong enough to bridge two centuries, this bond has granted to hundreds of gifted students not only friendship and mentoring but scholarship support -- support from those who came before them as well as from those whose parents, children, and spouses honor their memories.
Scholarships occupy a cherished tradition at Chicago-Kent. One of our first scholarship recipients was our great friend and benefactor, Judge Abraham Lincoln Marovitz '25. As a teenager, the judge worked days as an office boy at a Chicago law firm, earning extra money at night by boxing a few rounds at the local men's smokers.
Two of the firm's junior partners were ringside one night when the judge got knocked down several times in the first round. The next morning the firm's senior partner called young Marovitz to his office. Informing him that he had no future in boxing, the partner handed him a check and sent him over to Kent College of Law to enroll in night school. The rest, of course, is history.
As the judges' experience so aptly demonstrates, scholarships serve two traditions: they recognize excellence, and they make education available to those who otherwise could not afford it. Chicago-Kent arises from both traditions: It is a professional school that pursues excellence, and it is a community that, from its earlier days, has made it possible for those of modest origins to become leaders of the bar.
Scholarships cultivate diversity, infusing our school with the intelligence and experience of students from multiple backgrounds and cultures. They broaden our school's intellectual life, enabling talented students to participate fully in a variety of clinical and academic activities. Above all they widen the gateway to our profession, gifting the legal community with fine young lawyers who might have slipped past us if not for the vision of those who came before them.
In addition to building traditional law school scholarships, Chicago-Kent has created a new program -- the Honors Scholarship Program -- for students whose academic achievements and leadership skills equip them to deal with complex issues arising at the intersection of law, science and globalization. Honors Scholarships will be awarded each year to ten top college graduates from throughout the United States.
Honors Scholars will reinforce the law school's unique position as part of a technological university with a global reach. In addition to cultivating a deep understanding of fundamental legal theory, Honors Scholars will play active roles throughout their legal education in Chicago-Kent's new Global Law and Policy Initiative and Institute for Science, Law and Technology.
Through all of our scholarships we renew Chicago-Kent's longstanding commitment to excellence and to opportunities for those with the drive and commitment to be good lawyers, regardless of means or background. This report salutes the many friends and alumnae/i who support Chicago-Kent's numerous scholarship programs.
We honor not only the eleven donors profiled in these pages, but the dozens of extraordinary individuals who endow named scholarships year after year, and the hundreds more who faithfully contribute to our general scholarship fund. Each has shaped any number of young lives with their vision and generosity. Each sustains the generational bond that makes Chicago-Kent a law school for the present and the future.