Presidential Scholars Arrive
Five students recently enrolled in our inaugural class of Berklee Presidential Scholars. These talented students, drummers Jeffrey Fajardo and Ayeisha Mathis, pianist Victor Gould, saxophonist Robert Hanlon, and vocalist Denise Hudson, have been awarded full-tuition scholarships as well as room and board for their four years of study at Berklee.
Initiated by President Roger Brown, this highly competitive scholarship program aims to attract extraordinarily talented students in the United States who might not have been able to attend Berklee without full scholarships. The program received the enthusiastic support of our Board of Trustees, who have allocated ongoing funding for it from Berklee’s endowment.
Our presidential scholars will benefit from a Berklee education, but they will also serve as models who enrich the education of our other students. We also hope that they will attract other musicians who have great potential.
Berklee holds dozens of scholarship auditions all over the world, seeking the best music students. Using the North American scholarship tour as our base, we auditioned hundreds of students for this and other scholarships. The auditioning teams and admissions office nominated a long list of top candidates from those auditions. Next, a blue-ribbon team, led by Director of Scholarships Damien Bracken, scrutinized the résumés and recordings of each nominee. Five recipients who reflect the rich diversity of America were chosen.
We will identify five additional presidential scholars each year for the next three years in order to bring the total number of scholars attending Berklee simultaneously to 20. We trust that these individuals will represent the best student musical talent in the country.
As we’ve looked back, we’ve seen that pockets of amazing musicians who would later rock the music world attended Berklee concurrently. President Roger Brown refers to these as “renaissance periods” when musicians such as Kevin Eubanks, Branford Marsalis, Greg Osby, Terri Lyne Carrington, Wallace Roney, Steve Vai, Smitty Smith, Jeff “Tain” Watts, and others were at Berklee. The earlier Mike Stern-Vinnie Colaiuta-Steve Smith era was similar.
President Brown wants to create as many renaissance periods as possible. We need you, our alumni, to be on the lookout for the best and brightest to help us accomplish this. We’re looking for the next crop of great young musicians. If you know any, ask them to consider Berklee. If they are gifted enough, money need no longer be an obstacle to enrolling. Send me an e-mail at lbethune@berklee.edu, and I’ll pass on the information to our scholarship team. Together we can make Berklee even greater.
