Volume 1 | Issue 2
Summer
2009
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Find out more about UNC Advantage Scholarships and other types of student support
Fonvilles give Advantage to students in middle-class squeeze
By Hope Baptiste
Tommy Fonville meets with a client in his Raleigh office.
The usual approach is to fill out all the necessary forms and applications. Depending on specific calculations, deserving college-bound students will be offered a grant/loan package from their chosen school. If they’re really fortunate and particularly high-achieving, a merit scholarship may be offered.
No problem, right?
Maybe. But what happens to the students whose families fail to qualify for federal need-based aid and find that picking up the tab of a college education stresses their finances to the limit? For those headed to UNC, help is available through a new student support initiative — the Advantage Scholarship — which seeks to provide scholarship support to high-achieving students from moderate-income families.
This help is especially important, says Shirley Ort, Carolina’s associate provost and director of the Office of Scholarships and Student Aid, because these students often end up in significant debt and are at higher risk for attrition. “It is hard for moderate-income families to pay for college when federal need-analysis standards determine that they have ‘no need,’” she said. “Unless families have been able to save some money for college, there are few options but to borrow. Students who come from these families are often working more hours and borrowing considerably more than those students who are receiving need-based aid.
“The Carolina Advantage Scholarships will be a big help to them and address a significant gap in what we’re able to offer.”
Enter alumnus Thomas L. (Tommy) Fonville and his wife, Kate, of Raleigh. The couple shares the belief that a college education, specifically a Carolina education, should be available to every student who gains admission, regardless of their economic status.
They created one of the University’s first Advantage Scholarships — the Thomas and Kate Fonville Advantage Scholarship Fund — with an expendable gift that will support a student this fall from a moderate-income, single-parent household.
“It’s a shame for someone to be qualified to attend UNC and be unable to go because they can’t afford it,” said Fonville. “In deciding on what we were going to do for the University, this is the change we wanted to help make. Carolina is a tremendous educational value, and [a Carolina degree] is a significant asset for a young person planning a career, a future and a life.”
Tommy (back row, far left) pictured with daughter Mary Burr Edwards, wife Kate, daughter Anna Dunn Fonville and grandchildren
Tommy says that his Carolina experience set the table for the rest of his life. He credits the relationships he made as a student for his successful run in the volatile real estate business. The relationship he built with Phi Delta Theta fraternity brother John (Johnny) Morisey formed the foundation for a thriving business partnership that has endured for more than 36 years. Together they founded Fonville Morisey Realty, the leading residential real estate company in the greater Raleigh-Durham-Research Triangle Park area, and have been partners and friends ever since. “It was easy for Johnny and me to become friends because we shared similar interests and goals,” Fonville said. “More importantly, it’s that it has become a lifelong friendship and partnership that sets it above most others in my life. Now I hope we’re able to help someone else achieve some of those same goals and dreams as well.”
The Fonville Advantage Scholarship is just the latest chapter in the Fonvilles’ long history of supporting the University and its students. They created the Thomas and Kate Fonville Scholarship Fund in 1995 to provide need-based assistance to qualified students, again with preference for those of single parents. “When we started this [fund], we focused on single-parent families because, to us, that is a ‘double-need’ situation,” they said. “We have seen how challenging it is for parents to provide what their kids need, and we have the highest respect for them, most of whom are single female parents trying to send their kids to college.”
They didn’t stop there. The Fonvilles have also provided expendable support to the Carolina Covenant, UNC’s nationally acclaimed financial aid program that provides a debt-free education to students whose family income is less than 200 percent of the federal poverty level.
“We feel very strongly that family assets, or lack thereof, do not define a student’s merit because every student who gets in to Carolina has merit,” they said. “It’s really about the value of our students to the University, our community, state and nation. One of Carolina’s greatest strengths is the character of its people and the relationships they form during their college days. We want to ensure that each student gets the chance.”
Advantage: Carolina.