$1 MILLION GRANT FROM STARR FOUNDATION TO SUPPORT FINANCIAL AID

Bryn Mawr College has received a $1 million grant from The Starr Foundation in recognition of the College's efforts to attract an economically diverse student body. The funds will be added to Bryn Mawr's existing C.V. Starr Scholarship Fund, which was established in 1988.

The largest gift from The Starr Foundation to Bryn Mawr to date, the grant will strengthen the College's ability to recruit and retain economically disadvantaged students. One of the ways Bryn Mawr recruits students is by participating in the Posse Program, a nationally acclaimed initiative that finds and develops teams of multicultural student leaders.

The $1 million gift brought the value of Bryn Mawr's C.V. Starr Fund to about $2.78 million. In recent years, the Starr Foundation has contributed about $200,000 annually to the fund. The foundation made the special additional gift of $1 million to honor the College for its longstanding commitment to economic diversity. Seventeen percent of Bryn Mawr students are eligible for the Pell Grant program, a federal financial-aid program for low-income students; this compares to a rate of 10 percent at highly selective colleges and universities nationwide.

Grant aid from the College supplements Pell grant funds, which fall far short of covering the cost of attending Bryn Mawr. The C.V. Starr Fund is the largest single source of such financial aid. In previous years, income from the fund supported four or five Starr Scholars each year. The new gift will permit the College to double that number to about 10.

The New York-based Starr Foundation was established in 1955 by Cornelius Vander Starr, founder of the worldwide insurance and financial services firm now known as American International Group, Inc. (AIG:NYSE). The foundation has assets of approximately $3.5 billion and each year makes grants in education, medicine and health care, human needs, culture, public policy and the environment.

Since 1980, the foundation has funded endowed scholarships to reflect C.V. Starr's personal interest in higher education and his concern for students with demonstrated ability but limited financial resources. The program now includes 130 colleges, universities and secondary schools. Since its creation, the Bryn Mawr C.V. Starr Scholarship Fund has awarded scholarships to 47 Bryn Mawr students.

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