Since its inception, The Thomas and Elsie Foundation has awarded over $2,000,000 worth of scholarships to students. There are usually between eight and fifteen scholarship students enrolled in colleges and universities during any academic year. The Deeley Foundation does not place any restrictions on the choice of schools; scholarship recipients are free to select any college or university they wish to attend.
The following chart shows the number of students receiving Deeley Foundation scholarships for any given academic year. While the number of students receiving aid varies from year to year, the trend over time is toward increasing the number receiving scholarships. With our expanding number of partnership agreements, we expect that this increasing trend will continue in the future.
Our scholarship recipients have attended over 20 different colleges and universities. Most students seem to prefer attending schools in the State of Connecticut. In addition, several recipients elected to attend schools in Massachusetts. Recipients have also attended schools in New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Florida, Vermont, and Virginia. The University of Connecticut is the most popular choice followed by Fairfield University, Southern Connecticut State University, and Central Connecticut State University.
We are extremely proud of the graduation rate of our scholarship recipients. Over 97% of our recipients graduate from college; a figure that exceeds the success rate of almost every college in the country! The chart below summarizes the wide array of colleges that our recipients have attended.
Students are not required to attend one of our partner schools, but many do. More than half of our scholarship recipients elected to attend one of our partner schools. This is not surprising since our objective in negotiating partnership agreements is to seek out those colleges and universities where significant numbers of our scholarship applicants apply. Our partnership agreements follow our students.
As you can see from the following chart, a significant portion of our scholarship funds are given to students attending state universities, in particular, the four state universities in Connecticut and the University of Connecticut, which is not one of our partners.
Scholarships are not necessarily awarded to students who are the best academically in high school. There are several factors that the selection committee considers when making scholarship awards, and academic success, while a factor, is not an overriding one. The chart below illustrates that roughly two-thirds of our scholarship recipients are NOT in the top 10% of the class academically.
Many of our recipients have gone on to obtain advanced degrees. More than half have obtained advanced degrees, and several have either obtained Doctorates or are working towards them. The chart below depicts the distribution of these degrees.
Many of our scholarship recipients have volunteered to serve as mentors to newer scholarship students, either those attending the same college or those enrolled in the same major. Whenever possible we assign a previous scholarship recipient to mentor a new recipient. Currently, we have more volunteers than we can use; either because we don’t have students at their college, or we don’t have students majoring in their areas of expertise.
The students whose names are highlighted below are those scholarship recipients who either are serving or have already served as mentors and/or are providing assistance to one or more of our scholarship recipients. Almost half of our previous scholarship recipients have volunteered to serve as mentors for newer recipients; several have volunteered multiple times! The Deeley Foundation is extremely appreciative of these students who are helping us “pay it forward”.
| Student’s Name | College or University Attended | Year |
|---|---|---|
| Valerie Moore | Fairfield University | 1996 |
| Rocco Guerrera | Fairfield University | 1997 |
| Richard Robaillard | Opted Not To Attend Fairfield University And Declined Award | 1998 |
| Miquel Acquino | Fairfield University | 1999 |
| Christine Lamas | Fairfield University | 1999 |
| Julian Saavedra | Fairfield University | 2000 |
| Christa Szantyr | Fairfield University | 2001 |
| Jenna LoGiudice | Fairfield University | 2002 |
| Rob Guerrera | Quinnipiac University | 2003 |
| Stephanie LeStage | Central Connecticut State University | 2003 |
| Erik Johnson | University of Connecticut | 2003 |
| Matt Alspaugh | Southern Connecticut State University | 2003 |
| Alexei Bachuretz | Quinnipiac University/Southern Connecticut State University | 2004 |
| Eric Ellis | Hampton University | 2004 |
| Kanping Zhong | University of Connecticut | 2004 |
| Jessica Bell | University of Connecticut | 2005 |
| Peter Gonzalez | Southern Connecticut State University/University of Central Florida | 2005 |
| Marisa Mango | Southern Connecticut State University | 2005 |
| David Bedard | University of Rhode Island | 2006 |
| Maegen Blankschen | Southern Connecticut State University | 2006 |
| Chavonne White | Southern Connecticut State University | 2006 |
| Arielle Bailey | St. John’s University | 2007 |
| Melanie Deziel | University of Connecticut | 2008 |
| Steven Naylor | Massachusetts Maritime Academy | 2008 |
| Daniel Camacho | University of Connecticut | 2009 |
| Aaron Radden | Central Connecticut State University | 2009 |
| Legairre Radden | Central Connecticut State University | 2009 |
| Michael Strumski | University of Connecticut | 2010 |
| Andre Gary | University of Connecticut | 2010 |
| Alexandra McDonald | Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences | 2010 |
| Henry Sahn | Quinnipiac University | 2010 |
| Deanna Rosa | Fairfield University | 2011 |
| Kaitlyn Dwyer | Central Connecticut State University | 2011 |
| Kimberly Grendzinski | University of Connecticut | 2012 |
| Jake L Martin | Gordon College | 2012 |
| Dionne Parker | Coastal Carolina University | 2013 |
| Molly Murphy | Southern Connecticut State University | 2013 |
| Hayley Iannantuoni | Southern Connecticut State University | 2013 |
| Brian Luis | Boston University | 2014 |
| Brandon Arnold | University of Connecticut | 2015 |
| Kerryan Ashley | University of Connecticut | 2015 |
| Cecilia Lopez | University of Connecticut | 2015 |
| Meaghan Spagnolo | Southern Connecticut State University | 2015 |
| Eunices Franco | University of Connecticut | 2016 |
| Ireland Gilmore | University of Connecticut | 2016 |
| Jake Rinaldi | Williams College | 2016 |
| Erin Brown | Central Connecticut State University | 2017 |
| Jatorra Jackson | University of Connecticut | 2017 |
| Heather Brown | University of Connecticut | 2017 |
| Klediol Kaso | University of Connecticut | 2018 |
| Jenna Madigan | University of Connecticut/Fairfield University | 2018 |
| Ava Longo | University of Connecticut/Connecticut State Community College | 2019 |
| Robert Guerin | Castleton University | 2019 |
| Katie Pelletier | Southern Connecticut State University | 2019 |
| Arreyion Yates | Stonehill College | 2019 |
| Liz DeCrisanti | Fairfield University | 2022 |
| Jeferson Garcia | Central Connecticut State University | 2022 |
| Tommy Romero | Western Connecticut State University | 2022 |
| Aidan Knappe | Southern Connecticut State University | 2021 |
| Jillian Mike | Providence College | 2021 |
| Benjamin Camp | University of Scranton | 2021 |
| Nathan Stellmach | Middlebury College | 2022 |
| Maddy Kurnik | Fairfield University | 2022 |
| Ashley Galvao | Central Connecticut State University | 2022 |
| Gillian Smith | Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute | 2022 |
| Gabriela Perez | Southern Connecticut State University | 2023 |
| Marcus Concepcion | Worcester Polytechnic Institute | 2023 |
| Dylan Bird | St. Lawrence University | 2023 |
| Kevin Grodecki | Western Michigan State University | 2023 |
Whenever possible; The Thomas and Elsie Deeley Foundation tries to remain in contact with former scholarship recipients. We continue to offer guidance and advice on careers and business decisions. To see what many of our former recipients have achieved and are currently doing, please go to the Updates On Past And Current Scholarship Recipients page of our website.