Today at our annual meeting of the Board of Directors in Hartford, CT, we announced with great pleasure that notifications of awards for the 2010/2011 academic year totaling $251,000 in financial support have been sent to 87 grateful Episcopal seminarians. This year's scholarship grants represent the highest award total in SIM's 153 year history, include 8 Named Scholarships provided by donors of $100,000 or more to SIM's endowment (the Fund for Future Leaders) and reflect a year-to-year increase of 18.7% in our average individual grant. These recipients represent 49 dioceses and are the first class to benefit from this year's first installment of $40,000 of the 2009 General Convention resolution to fund $200,000 over this triennium for the relief of seminarian debt.  General Convention selected SIM to administer these funds. 
  
This funding resulted primarily from many years of SIM's advocacy and a "grass roots' effort initiated by two SIM alumni calling upon diocesan conventions to take action to reverse the trend of increasing levels of seminarian indebtedness.  The financial support from General Convention represents the first time that The Episcopal Church has provided funds from its budget for theological education.  One of the two "alumni sponsors," Dean Kevin Martin, Christ Church Cathedral, Dallas, stated, "I feel like a grandfather that has provided for many future generations of seminarians in The Episcopal Church." 

I think I can speak for all of the Scholarship Committee when I say how compelling many of the applications are, conferring a real sense of the energy, the commitment and the spiritual depth that abounds among those preparing for ordination.  Even more impressive than our numbers this year are the stories of women and men that SIM donors support with their
contributions.

Upon returning to my parish in New Haven after a full day of our "Decision Day" work of applications review, I had the unique blessing of encountering two of the applicants, Berkeley Divinity School students, attending our Tuesday Evening Prayer and Eucharist at Christ Church.  No, I hadn't been the one to read their applications or make a specific recommendation, but their presence within the daily disciplines of worship here-and what I know of their growth and formation makes me that much more grateful to be part of SIM and deeply humbled to serve as chair of the Scholarship Committee.

Faithfully yours,


The Rev. David Cobb
Chair, SIM Scholarship Committee

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