Education has always been important to Donna and Dennis Lowe. Donna was an elementary school teacher, and Dennis joined the Air Force ROTC so he could afford to become the first in his family to attend college. When their son Rick finished high school, Donna and Dennis took out a second mortgage on their home to help him pay for his undergraduate degree at Cornell.

“We had a nice, middle-class life, but the extra cash flow needed to pay for college – it wasn’t there,” said Rick Lowe ’90, who earned a B.S. in biological sciences. “Education was always a top priority for them, so they were willing to make this considerable sacrifice to help me be able to get my education without going into mountains of debt. I am so grateful to my parents for their amazing support of my education, and I have been searching for a meaningful way to properly thank them.”

Lowe is honoring his parents and paying their generosity forward by establishing a scholarship in their name: The Donna and Dennis Lowe Scholarship will support undergraduates with financial need in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences beginning in fall 2022. Inspired by the “To Do the Greatest Good” capital campaign, Lowe and his wife, Shannon Lowe, were moved to establish a scholarship. To encourage donors to establish new or enhance existing endowed funds and further the goals of the affordability initiative, Cornell is offering a 1:2 match for gifts of $250,000 or more which are designated to endowed financial aid.

Read more on the CALS newsroom.