Students in the College of Business, which has been awarded $1 million, gather in the lobby of Ballentine Hall. Photo by Joseph Lachance.
Donation from Cynthia Deysher,’78, and her husband to go towards scholarships
Cynthia Deysher, an alumna of the University of Rhode Island, and her husband, Byron Deysher, recently donated $1 million to the Colleges of Business and Engineering.
Cynthia Deysher graduated from URI with a degree from the College of Business in accounting and used scholarships, grants and work-study funds to pay for her education.
Approximately $200,000 of the total donation was pledged to an already existing endowed scholarship, the Robert Edmund Marcille Memorial Scholarship Fund, which was started in 2002. Robert Edmund Marcille, Cynthia Deysher’s late father, graduated from URI in 1949 with a degree in electrical engineering.
When it began, the Marcille Scholarship Fund for engineering was started for a minimal amount of money. The current $200,000 donation will be distributed to the College of Engineering over the course of the next five years, increasing the amount of the already existing scholarship.
The Marcille Scholarship Fund stipulates that the purpose of the scholarship is to assist one student in the College of Engineering for financial aid and tuition funds only. Senior Director of Development for the College of Engineering Bill Koconis helps manage the incoming donations and scholarships for the URI Foundation in regards to engineering.
“[The URI Foundation is] the good steward of the donor dollar,” Koconis said. “We manage that money, we keep that endowment and the principal and off of the principal we refer to the yield, is the interest on it, which is just over three percent.”
Because the scholarship is such a large amount as the result of the Deyshers’ recent donation, the principal amount will be higher and students will receive more funding.
“That money will add to the existing scholarship which will be great,” Koconis said. “There’s a form of recognition tied to [scholarships], but we want to make sure we’re impacting students as best we can.”
The College of Business will see the majority of the Deyshers’ donation, with about $800,000 committed to the program.
“Cynthia Deysher is a great support of the college,” Dean of the College of Business Maling Ebrahimpour said.
According to Ebrahimpour, $250,000 of the Deyshers’ donation is for an operating scholarship.
“It’s not going to be endowment; we’re going to use it for a student,” Ebrahimpour said. “A student comes in and says ‘I am in dire need, I can’t afford this,’ we will use that scholarship to support them.”
An unspecified amount of the donation is set aside for an experiential learning fund, according to Ebrahimpour. This is for both students who need income during unpaid internships and to support students going abroad.
“It is in our strategic plan to get every student in the college to have experiential activity or global activity so this fund is exactly what we need,” Ebrahimpour said.
Additionally, $150,000 of the donation will go towards the Dean’s Excellence Fund. This portion of the money helps send students to business conferences and events both locally and internationally. The money pays for things like the students transportation, housing and event fees.
The allocation of the rest of the funds have not been publicly announced by the College of Business yet.
“She’s trying to encourage other women alumni to continue to contribute as much as they can,” Ebrahimpour said. “We have a very strong group of female alumni at the entire University and particularly at the college. She’s encouraging by this contribution, she’s encouraging them to really support the college and be on top of their alma mater.”
Ebrahimpour emphasized the importance of donations to the University’s success, using Cynthia Deysher’s pledge as an example of success.
“The ultimate goal is when you get out you’ll become a productive member of society,” Ebrahimpour said. “You’ll be working at a place you like to work and thrive. And this fund takes us closer to our goal for our students and we’re really hoping her contribution inspires a lot of other people. Not only women alumni, all alumni.”