The Davis United World College Scholars Program is a major philanthropic force in promoting international understanding.  At present, the program provides scholarship support for 1,100 current Davis UWC Scholars, from around the United States and the world, at a growing number of American colleges and universities. The program and these scholars are committed to building cross-cultural understanding across their campuses and around the globe in the 21st century. The stability of our world, and ensuring America’s place in it, demands no less than initiatives as large in scale, innovative in design, and powerful in impact as this.

A Pilot programs began in 2001 at Colby College, College of the Atlantic, Middlebury College, Princeton University, and Wellesley College. In this academic year, the greatly expanded program now includes 76 U.S. colleges and universities — including, among many others, Harvard, Williams and Duke in the East, Earlham, Carleton, Grinnell and Macalester colleges in the Midwest, and Lewis & Clark, Whitman and Claremont McKenna in the West.

This program is about the huge potential of private philanthropy to promote international understanding in dynamic, expanding ways through the education of exceptional young people. Among our leading objectives is to see a much greater commitment by the private philanthropic sector to this very worthy purpose in the future.

Davis United World College (UWC) Scholars are, indeed, outstanding students and remarkable young people. They have come this year from 126 nations, and those who graduate from the original five schools in the Class of 2007 — our program’s fourth graduating class — are leaving behind far-reaching impacts on their schools and their fellow students.

All the Davis UWC Scholars, at all the participating schools, are the heart and soul of this initiative. In these pages, we invite you to become acquainted with the Davis UWC Scholars Program and with its individual scholars—especially the 109 members of the graduating class of 2007.

	Philanthropists Shelby and Gale Davis with Executive Director Phil Geier in front of a remnant of the Berlin Wall on the Westminster College campus.

Private Philanthropy for Global Understanding
What is the Davis United World College Scholars Program? It is, above all, the vision and power of private philanthropy committed to the importance of fostering greater understanding among the world’s future decision-makers — Americans and citizens of other nations.

The program provides scholarships to students, from both the United States and other countries, who have proven themselves by completing their last two years of high school at a group of international schools called United World Colleges. These UWC schools are now in the United States, Bosnia, Canada, Costa Rica, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Norway, Singapore, Swaziland, the United Kingdom, and Venezuela. Since the founding of the first UWC in 1962 at the height of the Cold War, these schools have provided opportunities to students from some 175 countries, representing all regions of the world. Students are selected in their home countries by indigenous, voluntary committees, and receive scholarships to attend the United World College schools.

Seven years ago, Colby, College of the Atlantic, Middlebury, Princeton, and Wellesley were selected by  philanthropist Shelby M.C. Davis as the inaugural institutions for the Davis United World College Scholars Program Davis offered to provide scholarships for every UWC graduate who gained acceptance and then matriculated at these pilot schools, regardless of national origin or UWC attended. This remains the case for these five inaugural schools.

Beginning with the fall 2004 student matriculation, the Davis United World College Scholars Program has greatly expanded to include an additional 71 American colleges and universities. To assist these schools in meeting the financial needs of their scholars, Davis philanthropy contributes up to $10,000 of need-based aid for each scholar, every year of a four-year undergraduate degree program. All these additional schools also are awarded a $5,000 grant each year to support their admission outreach.

The goals of this Davis philanthropy continue to be to:

• Provide scholarship support for exemplary and promising students from all cultures, who have absorbed the passion of their UWC school community for building international understanding in the 21st century.
  
• Build clusters of these globally aware and committed students within the undergraduate populations of selected American schools.
• Seek to transform the American undergraduate experience through this international diversity and cultural interchange — as much for the large majority of American students on campus as for international students.
•  Invite participating colleges and universities to leverage the value of this initiative t­­o the long-term benefit of their students and faculties, their strategic planning, and their role in contributing proactively to the wellbeing of our volatile, highly interdependent world.
• Create a very diverse group of Davis United World College Scholars who will, during their educational experiences and throughout their lives, contribute significantly to shaping a better world.

The Davis United World College Scholars Program is different, intentionally so, from other fine efforts to internationalize the undergraduate experience. While preceding initiatives have focused more on research, faculty development, changes in curricula, uses of technology, and study abroad, this program creates a much greater diversity of students on campus. And by supporting scholars from many countries, who are energized by the UWC mission of building understanding in active, personal ways, the Davis UWC Scholars Program exemplifies how diversity can contribute to a much richer education and to a more globally engaged undergraduate experience for everyone on campus.

Outcome studies of the earlier initiatives found “low levels of international competency, a decline in the number of international student requirements, few students studying foreign languages as a percentage of total enrollments, and less funding from federal and state sources.” (The Ford Foundation, “Preliminary Status Report 2000: Internationalization of U.S. Higher Education.”) These findings encouraged the Davis philanthropy to model a fresh synthesis of approaches — some new, some well-proven — to internationalizing the American undergraduate experience.

As modeled by the Davis United World College Scholars Program, these approaches include:

• Private philanthropy as an innovative force. We hope this effort will inspire others in the philanthropic sector to invest in international education as well.
• Experiential learning as the essential tool for fostering international understanding.
• Diversifying the undergraduate population and campus experience through sponsorship of internationally oriented scholars.
• Recognizing that coherent initiatives and significant clusters of scholars can make greater impact.
• Encouraging an overarching purpose while leaving each college or university to build on its own particular strengths.

In sum, the Davis United World College Scholars Program has great aspirations. Though our program is still in its early stages, we envision a growing commitment to international understanding through education in the 21st century. In time, Davis UWC Scholars will take their place beside the alumni of such esteemed scholarship programs as Fulbright and Rhodes. We embrace fully the goal of the late Senator J. William Fulbright for the public-sector scholarship program that bears his name: to “bring a little more knowledge, a little more reason, and a little more compassion into world affairs, and thereby to increase the chance that nations will learn at last to live in peace and friendship.”

The great potential of the Davis United World College Scholars Program is not simply to build and perpetuate an outstanding scholarship program. It is to motivate others, especially in the private sector, to strengthen international understanding through their personal philanthropy, and to foster a deep commitment to international diversity and programming on American campuses. Our future depends on a world of talented individuals from diverse cultures who join in commitment to international understanding.

Davis United World College Scholars will, we believe, contribute to the realization of this important goal. We  hope you will, too.