Expanding education

UTRGV is offering a $6,000 Employee Online Enrollment Scholarship to full-time employees who wish to pursue a graduate degree beginning in the Spring 2019 semester.

Employees’ relatives, as an additional employee benefit, may apply for a $3,500 scholarship. Both of the scholarships are being distributed over six modules.

Relatives and family members will receive $1,000 in the first module and $500 per module thereafter. They must maintain a 3.0 GPA to keep the scholarship.

“We want to invest in our employees,” said Parwinder Grewal, executive vice president for Research, Graduate Studies and New Program Development.

“ … This is one of UTRGV’s mandates also, to expand educational opportunities for everyone.”

The scholarship is available only for accelerated online master’s programs, and for the moment, is a one-time opportunity. Every applicant who is accepted will receive the scholarship. And, for employees, it can be combined with the Employee Tuition Assistance Program.

To receive the scholarship, students must be unconditionally admitted into the program of their choice and to maintain it, they must enroll in at least two courses per module.

Students may apply for the scholarship through the graduate college website, www.utrgv.edu/graduate/ and it is part of the admission application.

“The process is exactly the same, family members can go on through the website,” Grewal said. “They will have to tell us who is their relative … and what is their employee number.”

The employee has to confirm that the relative is, in fact, a relative.

The scholarship is for online programs because they are more flexible for students. Another reason is the short time available to find faculty members, according to Grewal.

An information session was conducted last Thursday with around 140 people in attendance on both campuses. They learned more about the scholarship and some of the master’s programs offered at UTRGV.

A Mexican-American studies junior, Brishiy Cavazos, said this initiative could potentially help others financially and expand diversity within families.

Perla Pequeño, a web development manager for the Information Technology department, has a degree in web development, but wishes to pursue a career in computer science. She said the scholarship will help her get her master’s.

Pequeño said she plans to tell her family to apply for the scholarship since some of her relatives graduated from UTRGV.

“If we as employees are able to assist our families as well, I mean, that is [going to] help pretty much everybody … [and] keep on bringing families into UTRGV,” she said.

Grewal encourages employees to apply soon since the deadline is Jan. 2.

“It empowers our employees to get additional knowledge, to be more prepared for promotions, and it is a great investment in our employees,” he said.