Engineering Visionary Scholarship Initiative
Scholarships bring amazing engineers to Illinois.
In 2012, in partnership with The Grainger Foundation, we launched an ambitious initiative to raise $100 million in endowment support with a special emphasis on unrestricted scholarships. The Engineering Visionary Scholarship Initiative has since paved the way for hundreds of deserving students to make their dreams of becoming an engineer a reality.
The Engineering Visionary Scholarship Initiative attracts the brightest students, ensures a diverse and talented class, and helps reduce debt. We place a particular focus on highly qualified students from the state of Illinois. Your gift is the catalyst for access to education, for nurturing ambition, and for turning passions into possibilities. Your investment changes lives.
Campaign Progress
Our donors have helped raise over
$105 million for endowed undergraduate scholarships in support of Grainger Engineers!
TOTAL DONORS
2,000+
TOTAL RAISED
$105M
2020 Impact Report
Alumni and friends are preparing future generations of engineering students for success! Learn how Engineering Visionary Scholarships are preparing current students for a promising future and how scholarship support has impacted former scholars.
How has philanthropic support made a difference?
- Prior the EVS Initiative which started in 2013, The Grainger College of Engineering was only able to offer scholarship support to less than 1% of incoming freshmen. In the fall 2020 academic year, more than 15% of incoming freshmen have been awarded scholarship aid.
- Endowed EVS support has allowed the college to increase our largest average scholarship offer from $15,000 per year for four years, to $20,000 per year for four years. This support makes an immense difference in the lives and finances of students and their families and often are the reason they choose to attend Illinois.
- Thanks to philanthropic support, larger scholarships can be distributed more consistently to students every year. Engineering Visionary Scholarships will last into perpetuity, allowing alumni and friends of the college to continue to donate to EVS funds and help generations of Grainger Engineers.
Our alumni, friends, and corporate partners have given from around the globe and represent 16 countries.
Alumni
38%
Corporations & Organizations
55%
Friends of the College
7%
“I know that The Grainger College of Engineering is world-renowned for its high level of achievement and quality, and I felt a degree from here would open doors that otherwise would be inaccessible to me. Knowing that there are people who believe in my success, that they would help me financially has made me more confident that engineering is the career path for me. Receiving an Engineering Visionary Scholarship has allowed me to spend less time working and worrying about finances. ”
Jeremy Quinteros, Class of 2022
The Grainger Foundation's Commitment
The Grainger College of Engineering is named in honor of distinguished alumnus William W. Grainger, who founded the Fortune 500 industrial supply company W. W. Grainger in 1927. Our name reflects The Grainger Foundation’s unprecedented and unwavering support, totalling more than $300 million, to drive engineering entrepreneurship and innovation. It is the largest contribution ever to a public university to name a college of engineering, and we are honored to spread our global impact with the Grainger name.
This investment in the college’s bold vision creates endless opportunities for our students, faculty, and researchers that can be seen across our engineering campus—in the Engineering Visionary Scholarship Initiative, the Electrical and Computer Engineering Building, Everitt Laboratory, the Grainger Library and Information Center, the Grainger Chair in Electrical Engineering, and an endowment in support of engineering research.
Savannah Goodman
- EVS
- Alumna
Grainger Engineer, 2014
My scholarship helped fund my international travel to Uganda, which incited my passion for global energy access and has led me to pursue a career focused on distributed energy resources and microgrids.
Dana Yun
- EVS
- Student
Grainger Engineer, 2022
My parents moved to the United States to attend the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I was born and raised here, so the University of Illinois is my home.