Elon parents Charles and Casey Berg, of Westport, Conn., believe in the power of scholarships to help make an Elon education possible for students with financial need. They have made a $100,000 commitment to the university to endow the Berg Family Scholarship.
The Bergs praised the university’s commitment to global engagement and to building a campus community that reflects the world in which students will enter, both priorities in the Elon Commitment strategic plan. Creating additional need-based scholarships is a critical part of meeting these goals.
“I believe it’s important that the student body be as diverse as possible, including students with financial need,” Chuck Berg says. “It’s also important for students to experience different cultures. It’s pretty clear in business and any career that you pursue in life that if you don’t have global experiences you will not be prepared to succeed.”
The Bergs have been impressed by the experiences of their daughter, Hannah, who is an Elon senior.
“Elon is clearly a great place from an academic perspective,” Berg says. “There’s something about the culture of Elon that is designed to pick the students up and help them succeed. I feel like Elon is rooting for the students to do the best they can and to do better than they thought they could do. My hope for this scholarship is that over time students who otherwise wouldn’t have been able to have the experience my daughter has had will have that experience. That’s equally important for the student body as a whole as it is for the scholarship recipients.”