Elon University has received a $25,500 grant from the Algernon Sydney Sullivan Foundation to be used for financial aid. Students with financial need who have demonstrated a commitment to service-above-self and service to the community are eligible to apply for the assistance.
Additionally, the Foundation has made a grant of $5,000 to the Algernon Sydney Sullivan Endowment at Elon. The endowment was established at Elon in 1998 to provide support in perpetuity for Sullivan Scholars at Elon.
The Algernon Sydney Sullivan Foundation, now located in Oxford, Miss., was chartered in New York in 1934. Its purpose is to promote service to others and service to the broader community, values exemplified by the lives of Algernon Sydney (1826 – 1887) and Mary Mildred Hammond Sullivan (1836 – 1933), the parents of the organization’s founder, George Hammond Sullivan (1859 – 1956).
Algernon S. Sullivan, co-founder in 1879 of the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, and his wife Mary M. H. Sullivan, were leading philanthropists and promoters of southern relief and reconciliation in the aftermath of the U.S. Civil War. A recent book about Mrs. Sullivan’s work, “Uplifting the South: Mary Mildred Sullivan’s legacy for Appalachia,” by Kathleen Curtis Wilson (Overmountain Press, 2006), is in Elon’s Belk Library collection. Today, Sullivan & Cromwell LLP is ranked among the most prestigious law firms in the United States and the 15th largest law firm in the world.
Since 1976, the Foundation has contributed more than a $500,000 in direct scholarship and endowment giving to Elon. The Algernon Sydney Sullivan endowment is valued at nearly $105,000.
In addition to providing support for financial aid to small private colleges located primarily in the Appalachian region, the Sullivan Foundation also collaborates with 53 Southeastern colleges and universities in presenting awards in memory of Algernon and Mary Mildred Sullivan. These awards recognize exceptional qualities of service and are presented each year to one or more graduating seniors and to a non-student member of the college community.
Elon’s 2007 Sullivan student award recipients were Carson Foushee, a leisure and sport management major from Statesville, N.C.; Kristin Smith, a double major in business administration and psychology from Raleigh, N.C. Ron Klepcyk, Elon’s director of human resources and an alderman for the Town of Elon, received the 2007 non-student award.