Giving

Enhance the Student Experience

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Development Office

Development Office

Whether through sports, the 100+ student clubs and organizations on campus, Greek activities or spiritual life, Southwestern students are actively pursuing their own development and personal growth while building life-long friendships, professional contacts and mentors along the way.


Scholarships

Annually funded and endowed scholarships allow talented and deserving students—regardless of their financial ability—to attend Southwestern University and prepare for meaningful and fulfilling lives.

Create a New Scholarship

Southwestern University considers all students for a merit scholarship through a holistic review process, and competitive scholarships are offered to students who demonstrate outstanding academic excellence. Our commitment to ensuring that qualified students from all income levels who wish to attend Southwestern have access to a variety of financial opportunities provides a meaningful way for donors to help guarantee that accomplished students who want to be here, can. The University also offers need-based scholarships to support students who demonstrate financial need.

Annual or Endowed?

What do you want your legacy to be? If you are considering establishing a new scholarship at Southwestern, the primary decision to make is whether you would like to create an annual or endowed scholarship. Although both can be named scholarships, annual scholarships require a minimum $3,000 gift and cannot be designated, while endowed scholarships require a minimum $50,000 gift (this commitment can be given over a period of time up to five years) and can be designated to support students with a certain major, from a certain geographic location, or to support academic merit or need. Fully endowed scholarships remain in perpetuity and can be established in honor or in memory of a family member or friend.

Contribute to an Existing Endowed Scholarship Fund

Donors may also elect to give to an existing, endowed scholarship fund.



Being an English and Economics double major, with a business minor, this internship allowed me to grow in all my areas of study. The experience would not have been the same without you! Without you, people like me may not be able to achieve their dream internship as I did. I will be forever grateful to have had this opportunity because of your generosity.

Madeline Barlow ’22, Editorial Intern with Grey Journal


High Impact
Experiences

High impact experiences at Southwestern are intentionally woven into the campus culture, offering real-world opportunities for students to integrate, synthesize, and apply their learning through a variety of experiences and disciplines.

Internships

Internships allow students to acquire field or on-the-job experience and are structured so that they are encouraged to relate their classroom activities to their field experience. Students pursuing academic internships work with their faculty supervisor to complete significant off-site activities, such as keeping a journal, writing, research, classroom meetings, and presentations.

Positions are available from businesses, government agencies, and non-profit organizations, locally and across the country. Since some internships are un-paid or located in cities away from the students’ home towns, gifts are needed to help support students who are seeking these types of experiences.

Study Abroad

Southwestern’s Office of Study Abroad and International Student Services takes a holistic approach to off-campus study by preparing and supporting students to live and learn in a new cultural setting. Exposure to different ideas and perspectives is an integral part of the Southwestern Experience.

While Southwestern partners with a program provider to run the logistics of our study abroad programs, they are typically led by Southwestern faculty and students are in class with their fellow peers. Gifts help to make these experiences available to all students.

Faculty-Student Collaborative Research

Faculty-led research is one of Southwestern’s key high impact experiences in which students engage in research during the academic year and in the summer, both on and off campus. These collaborative research experiences outside of the classroom are valuable career preparation, especially for those students entering scientific and technical fields.

Learn about SCOPE: Summer Collaborative Opportunities and Experiences

Community-Engaged Learning

The Office of Community-Engaged Learning (OCEL) collaborates with students, faculty, and community organizations to develop projects that promote sustained, mutually beneficial collaborations emphasizing student learning and community benefits.


Academic
Advising and
Retention

The purpose of advising at Southwestern is to create a dynamic relationship where students collaborate with faculty and staff advisors to foster every student’s academic potential by making connections among classes, experiential learning, and co-curricular programming.

Through this process, students learn to identify and explain personal and professional short and long-term goals, appropriate a curriculum that will achieve their goals, and advantage themselves of institutional resources that can help pave the way to accomplishing those goals.


Career and Professional
Development

Southwestern’s award-winning Center for Career and Professional Development provides a student-centered approach to professional development that is highly personalized—from advising to programming to customized connections with employers. This boutique model leverages our Career Community network of engaged alumni to help students find career direction while enhancing the skills they need for both personal and professional success.

SOAR Summit
I-CORPS Program


I wanted to sincerely express my gratitude for your support in allowing me to take part in the SCOPE program and for granting me this biological research experience! The knowledge, skills, professional and personal development that I obtained this summer is invaluable to me and could not have been possible without donors like you!

Lillian Dolapchiev ’23 Biology major


Student Life
Initiatives

As a small, vibrant residential campus, our on-campus living program is an integral part of the total student experience. We believe, and research has shown, that students who live on campus enjoy greater academic success and are more likely to achieve in other areas such as teamwork, problem solving, and leadership.

Residence Life Programming

Living while learning together is an important aspect of the Southwestern Experience. Our residential experience empowers students to be active, engaged community members, and to develop lifelong friendships and skills such as responsible decision-making, problem-solving, and teamwork. Through in-hall educational programming, we provide stimulating learning experiences that are personalized to residents’ needs and interests, from academic achievement in the first year to career readiness in the last.

Counseling Services

The Counseling Center provides confidential, short-term individual, group, and couples counseling concerning personal issues. The Center’s services are dedicated to helping students clarify the nature of their concerns and explore effective ways of handling them.

MOSAIC

Through the Mosaic program, the Office of Student Life encourages students to intentionally construct their Southwestern Experience and engage in opportunities that help develop their personal growth and align with professional objectives.

Learn more about MOSAIC

Greek Life

Gifts may be designated to a myriad of endowed scholarship funds, established to support the students belonging to each Greek organization. Gifts may also be directed to support the Pi Kappa Alpha or Kappa Alpha houses since they are owned and operated by Southwestern University.

Clubs & Organizations

Contributions may be designated to support student organizations/clubs that are recognized by Southwestern University.

SIRA (Southwestern Intramural & Recreational Activities)

Funding can be directed to support the programs offered to students through SIRA (Southwestern Intramural & Recreational Activities).

For those looking for less official (but still competitive) activities to choose from, there are 22 intramural sports and two club sports: SU Cheerleaders and SU Dancers. More than 60% of our students participate annually in some form of organized physical activity.

Learn more about SIRA

Diversity, Inclusion, Belonging and Equity (DIBE)

The Office of Diversity Education (ODE) works to promote diversity, inclusion, belonging and equity on campus. The ODE also provides resources and supports the continued development of a positive campus climate by supporting historically underrepresented students, providing advising to cultural and identity-based student organizations, and hosting workshops, trainings, events and programs on diversity and social justice topics for the campus community.

Athletics

A primary goal of the Athletic Department is for all aspects of its sports programs to reflect Southwestern’s commitment to the principles of amateur athletics and ethical conduct. The Athletic Department promotes sportsmanship by stressing civility, fairness, honesty, and respect toward teammates, officials, and opponents. Additionally, the Athletic Department places emphasis on the health and welfare of its student-athletes.

Our athletes compete in NCAA Division III basketball, cross-country, golf, lacrosse, soccer, swimming and diving, tennis, and track and field for men and women; men’s baseball and football; and women’s softball and volleyball. Our teams are members of the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference (SCAC) and our football team is an affiliate member of the American Southwest Conference (ASC).


Contact Us
Development Office
512.863.1211