Starting in fall 2020, the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts will provide full-tuition scholarships and travel stipends for 10 graduate students annually.

Photo by Stephen Huber

The fellowship is funded by a gift from the Sam and Marilyn Fox Foundation and serves as a targeted approach to aid graduate students, who often receive less support than undergraduate students.

In recent years, the school has received significant financial support; the Fox family donation follows an $84.4 million campaign led by Anabeth and John Weil to support Sam Fox facilities starting in the 2008-2009 school year, notably including the opening of Weil Hall this year. By the time the campaign concluded on June 30, 2018, $22.4 million was earmarked for scholarship funding for both undergraduate and graduate students.

“Now that we have these great facilities, we have to make sure that we’re focused on continuing to provide the kind of scholarship support that we need,” Sam Fox Dean Carmon Colangelo said. “We feel like we now are a very attractive, beautiful space, it’s all connected in the way that we wanted to be. And now we want to be able to give the kind of financial support to the best students possible.”

In recent years, the University has made strides towards increasing the number of Pell-eligible students admitted. However, since the Pell Grant is only given to undergraduates, the school was motivated to create a signature program for graduate art students, an area in which Colangelo characterized the University as “slipping behind” in recruitment compared to peer institutions.

Four of the 10 awards will go to students in the College of Art and six will be awarded to College of Architecture students. Current scholarships for graduate art students include the Sam Fox School Graduate Scholarship and the Ernestine Betsberg and Arthur Osver Scholarship, which cover 100% and 75% of tuition, respectively, to an MFA candidate in Visual Art each year. Sam Fox graduate students are also currently eligible for several University-wide scholarships.

By including travel stipends, the program aims to help mitigate the negative effects on students who have their tuition covered but may lack the discretionary income necessary for everyday life while abroad.

“We want to recruit the kinds of students that think about social equity and responsibility, as well as through design, addressing some of the problems that are happening here in St. Louis… and hopefully we’re hoping to recruit some of these graduates to stay here in St. Louis and work in St. Louis and make the difference,” Colangelo said.

Amy Hauft, director of the College & Graduate School of Art, said that the announcement falls in line with Chancellor Andrew Martin’s commitment to the WashU Pledge, which will cover the cost of a University education for undergraduate students from Missouri and southern Illinois.

“I think this is very much in line with Chancellor Martin’s ambitions for Washington University to be more in service to the local community, the state and the region,” Hauft said. “But it’s bigger than that, too. Because it isn’t constrained by location, the applicants can come from anywhere.”

Improving how effectively Sam Fox recruits graduate students has also been a priority for the University. Colangelo admitted that the graduate recruiting process is often more difficult than the undergraduate admissions process because undergraduate programs generally receive more funding for advertising and reputation building, while pre-professional programs often have to rely on tuition dollars and gifts.

“I’m excited…We worked a long time to do this,” Colangelo said. “It has been the number one thing that keeps me up at night, thinking about how to give students support.”

Hannah Cushing, a second year College of Architecture graduate student, favored the program’s initiative to make Sam Fox more accessible to students of all backgrounds.

“College is really expensive, and I think that cost and the fear of being in debt stops a lot of people from pursuing higher education,” Cushing said.

Hauft emphasized the larger importance behind granting more artists the ability to study at Sam Fox at the graduate level, and what it could mean in the long-term.

“Artists are these conduits of the times, and they are translating what’s happening
into art or illustration,” Hauft said. “And it’s so important to facilitate this kind of reaction to our culture. And we’re just so grateful to make access that much more available through this kind of a donation, and I hope it’ll be a trend that even more people will do the same thing and help us to make this kind of education available to even more people.”