Dr. David A. Fullard
David A. Fullard Opportunity Scholarship
In elementary and high schools, I never fully understood the sacrifices my mother, aunt and grandmother made to provide the emotional and financial support necessary for me to have a Catholic school education. Based on the alternative school choices available at the time, there is no doubt in my mind that I would not otherwise have had the opportunity to experience a quality education.
During my undergraduate and postgraduate college years, I was able to pay my own tuition through employment, grants and loans but I never lost sight of the fact that financial restraints during my youth may have prevented my careers in law enforcement, education and the arts from becoming a reality.
In honor of the incredible women in my life who pooled their resources, ingenuity and will to make a better life for me, I created The David A. Fullard Opportunity Scholarship as a way to pay it forward to those in need. This scholarship is available to male, African-American undergraduate students with need enrolled through the college’s Metropolitan Center. Preference is given to students who demonstrate a commitment to use their education to benefit their communities.
It is my hope that the recipient of this scholarship “aspires to inspire” in the footsteps of honored African-Americans such as Colin Luther Powell, former secretary of state and retired four-star U.S. Army general; Jesse Ernest Wilkins Jr., mathematician and nuclear scientist; James E. Bowman, M.D., University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine professor of pathology and genetics; Charles F. Bolden Jr., NASA administrator; Robert L. Johnson, BET founder; Neil deGrasse Tyson, American astrophysicist and Hayden Planetarium director; Benjamin Solomon Carson Sr., M.D., American neurosurgeon and Johns Hopkins Hospital director of pediatric neurosurgery; Alvin F. Poussaint, Harvard Medical School psychiatry professor; Jerome A. Holmes, Tenth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals judge; and Barack Obama, 44th U.S. president.
– David A. Fullard, Ph.D.
“Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.”
– Malcolm X