When Solange Jackson’s brother collapsed while exercising with his college football team in 2016, her family was shocked. He was diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, which causes the thickening of the heart muscle. After a week in a coma, Jackson’s brother died with a condition that could have been treated if caught earlier.
“No one ever detected my brother’s condition,” says Jackson. “I felt like, with all the physicals we get as athletes, why did no one do a heart check on him? How was it never detected?”
A recent UC San Diego human biology graduate, Jackson is now working towards her master’s degree in health administration from USC. She hopes to use her experience to change health care policies in underrepresented communities. Jackson credits the scholarship she received with helping her cover food and housing expenses and allowing her to spend any extra time volunteering to help others.
Jackson is one of many UC San Diego graduates working to make a difference in our community – from finding better treatments for disease to developing innovations to address some of the world’s biggest challenges.
To support promising students who will go on to become tomorrow’s leaders, UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla has established the Chancellor’s Alumni Council Scholarships Match. The goal is to raise $1 million, bringing total scholarship funding with the match to $2 million.
Eligible gifts that are made to scholarships endorsed by the campus’s alumni councils will be matched 1:1 through June 2025. Those include the Asian Pacific Islander Alumni Council, Black Alumni Council, Chicanx Latinx Alumni Council and Pilipino/a/x Alumni Council.
“At UC San Diego, we are dedicated to ensuring that students from all backgrounds have access to the world-class education this campus has to offer,” Khosla shared with GB Magazine San Diego. “This initiative is very important to me, and I am proud of our alumni councils, which are working tirelessly to help raise scholarship funds so that the next generation of students have the tools they need to succeed.”
Yen Tu, a UC San Diego alumna of 1991, is a leader in nonprofit management and member of the Asian Pacific Islander Alumni Council. When she was an undergraduate, scholarship support allowed her to travel abroad to Hong Kong. “I was a fully independent student with no family support, so getting scholarship funding meant the world to me,” said Tu. “It allowed me to study abroad, which was transformative for me and impacted the rest of my life.”
Current UC San Diego student Kelly Mendoza is a scholarship recipient who hopes to become an architect. But coming from a low-income background, she was worried about how her family would cover the cost of a university education. The scholarship she received made all the difference. “We have always been tight on money, sometimes using food stamps,” said Mendoza. “For a child who worries about whether they can attend college and pursue their dreams, a scholarship is like a ray of light. Scholarships bring hope.”
To learn more about how you can make a difference, please visit www.crowdsurf.ucsd.edu/pages/alumni-council-scholarships or scan the QR code.