University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business commons area.
At Michigan Ross, A $4.9M Grant Is Connecting Business With Climate Action
What if your business degree could help you to do more than grow a company or boost its bottom line? What if it could also help you rethink how that company uses resources, responds to climate change, and creates a more sustainable future?
At the University of Michigan, a new $4.9 million grant is helping make this possible. MLive reporter Drew Saunders reported the details based on information from University of Michigan officials and the Erb Institute, which says 72 graduate students are currently receiving support through the program.
The gift is from the Fred & Barbara Erb Family Foundation, and it will help expand scholarship support for graduate students pursuing dual MBA and MS degrees through Michigan’s Ross School of Business and the School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS).
Students who enter the program as direct admits could receive up to $40,000 per year, while qualifying students who have already completed at least a year of their program can receive up to $25,000 annually as mid-year admits.
The scholarship is also retroactive, meaning students can use the funding toward current tuition as well as eligible student debt from earlier in their program. For undergraduates, students receive the scholarship while completing their bachelor’s degree. However, they can qualify after graduation if they are accepted into a different University of Michigan program covered by the scholarship.
The funding is intended for a greater reason than simply helping students pay tuition. Fred Erb was a 1947 Ross graduate who later operated Erb Lumber Co., and the family has been investing in the institute for decades. To date, they’ve contributed a total of $20 million in gifts, plus $15 million in matching gifts, over the years, going towards interdisciplinary teaching and research in global sustainability.
“Scholarships are one of the most powerful tools to ensure we are continuing to shape a future that is sustainable in every way through the power of our students and alumni,” says the Erb Institute Faculty Director, Charlene Zietsma.
Scholarship recipient Mariana Lopes says that the impact of that support means much more to her than reducing a financial burden.
“The Erb Legacy Scholarship gives us relief, but it also gives us something even more powerful: the possibility of thinking bigger, of dreaming, of having options, and choosing what we do with our lives while we learn and live experiences that may let us make a difference in this world and change people’s lives,” she says. “And with that opportunity comes responsibility. I want to make it worth it.”
The Erb family says that belief is what motivated their recent investment. “We believe that business can – and must – be a tool for good in the world and Erb students and alumni are living proof of that belief,” shares John Erb, chair of the Fred & Barbara Erb Family Foundation.
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