UWC Committee of India

PEOPLE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE
A Conversation with Shelby Davis

How did the Davis UWC Scholars program begin?

I went to visit the United World College in Montezuma, New Mexico. I'd never been there before, and I was early - so I wandered around campus, unescortedm and saw some lights on in a building that turned out to be an indoor swimming pool.

There were two boys sitting at the edge, talking. I walked in and said, "I'm new on campus. Could you tell me, are you students here?" They said "Yes, we are." One boy jumped up and said, "I'm from Israel." The other boy jumped up and said, "I'm from Palestine. And we're roommates here." The first boy said, "And we are friends - and this could never happen in our country."

That bridge of understanding hit me hard. I thought, This is amazing! This is what the future needs. So I funded all the Americans who go to the United World Colleges. Then I started visiting the various UWC campuses around the world - they're on five continents in 10 countries. I met more of the international students who make up the vast majority of the student population. They were such achievers; they were so vibrant, so motivated. They were far away from home, in almost every case - yet they were not going to lose this opportunity.

So I started saying to myself that if some of them want to go on to universities in the United States, and they're good enough to get in - and I have nothing to do with that - then I'm interested in funding them. Because they've proved a lot to me. So I started to fund all students who graduated from the UWC school system and were accepted at five American colleges and universities where our family had some connection.

We're broadening that now to perhaps 50 American universities that will each, we hope, buildt up a cadre of students from the United World Colleges. I think we're going to be funding close to a thousand Davis UWC Scholars a year! It's ben growing rapidly.

Expanding the Program

The Davis United World College Scholars program is expanding beyond the original five colleges featured in this first report.

The following US institutions have been offered grants to host Davis UWC Scholars:

Amherst College
Barnard College
Bates College
Bowdoin College
Brown University
Bryn Mawr College
Carleton College
Chicago Art Institute
Claremont McKenna College
Colby College
Colgate University
College of the Atlantic
Colorado College
Connecticut College
Cornell University
Dartmouth College
Dickinson College
Earlham College
Fraknlin and Marshall College
Grinnell College
Hamilton College
Harvard University
Haveford College
Hood College
Johns Hopkins University
Lafayette University
Lake Forest College
Lewis and Clark College
Macalester College
Methodist College
Middlebury College
Mount Holyoke College
Oberlin College
Princeton University
St. Lawrence University
San Francisco Art Institute
Skidmore College
Smith College
Swarthmore College
Trinity College (CT)
Vassar College
University of Redlands
University of Richmond
University of Virginia
Washington and Lee University
Wellesley College
Wesleyan University
Westminster College
Whitman College
Williams College
Yale University