The Beinecke Scholarship Program

The Beinecke Scholarship Program was established in 1971 by the Board of Directors of The Sperry and Hutchinson Company to honor Edwin, Frederick, and Walter Beinecke. The Board created an endowment to provide substantial scholarships for the graduate education of young men and women of exceptional promise. The program seeks to encourage and enable highly motivated students to pursue opportunities available to them and to be courageous in the selection of a graduate course of study in the arts, humanities and social sciences. Since 1975 the program has selected 739 college juniors from 122 different undergraduate institutions for support during graduate study at any accredited university.

Each scholar receives $5,000 immediately prior to entering graduate school and an additional $30,000 while attending graduate school. There are no geographic restrictions on the use of the scholarship, and recipients are allowed to supplement the award with other scholarships, assistantships and research grants. Scholars are encouraged to begin graduate study immediately following graduation and must utilize all funding within six years of completing their undergraduate studies, and within five years of beginning graduate studies.

The Beinecke African Scholarship Program

The Beinecke African Scholarship Program was established in 1996 in cooperation with the Wildlife Conservation Society. The program was established to enable African students to pursue graduate study in conservation or wildlife ecology at a University in the United States.

A single scholarship was awarded from 1998 to 2002 at which time the number of awards was increased to two per year and enrollment in Universities outside of the United States was permitted. One of these two annual awards is funded by The Sperry Fund while the other is funded by an endowment established in support of the program at the Wildlife Conservation Society. To date, a total of 43 Beinecke African Scholarships have been awarded. Of these, 24 have been directly funded by The Sperry Fund, one by The Prospect Hill Foundation and 18 by the endowment at the Wildlife Conservation Society.