News Release

Carolina jump-starts $60 million merit-based  
scholarship drive with $10 million bequest

CHAPEL HILL – The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill announced today (Sept. 15) that it will launch a $60 million campaign to raise funds for merit-based scholarships, furthering efforts to attract more top high school graduating seniors from North Carolina and beyond.

UNC Chancellor James Moeser, who announced the plan this afternoon in his annual State of the University address, said the campaign already has received a $10 million bequest from the estate of Col. John Harvey Robinson, a career Army officer from New York who earned a master’s of business administration at Carolina in 1957.

"Carolina attracts great students, and the best of these students have many opportunities," Moeser said in the address to the university community. "In the past we have lost some to other universities offering merit-based scholarships. … Col. Robinson’s generosity will assist us in attracting the best and brightest to Chapel Hill."

The $60 million drive will be a part of the Carolina First Campaign, a comprehensive, multi-year, private fund-raising campaign to support Carolina’s vision of becoming the nation’s leading public university.

The scholarships campaign aims to create an endowment supporting more than 600 new merit-based scholarships. That will raise Carolina’s total number of merit-based scholarships to about 1,400, enabling the university to double the number of awards to students from North Carolina. This means that 300 total freshmen North Carolinians will receive a merit-based scholarship each year. The university also will be able to offer the scholarships each year to 15 additional freshmen from outside the state.

The scholarships will go to students who have shown superior achievement in high school, and, like need-based scholarships, they will be renewable for the entire four years of study at Carolina.

"By awarding merit-based scholarships, the University recognizes the phenomenal level of achievement of these students, achievement that strongly indicates that they will make a difference on our campus," said Dr. Jerome Lucido, UNC’s vice provost for enrollment policy and management. "For many of these students, merit-based scholarships are also an important way to help defray the costs of the world-class higher education opportunity offered here at Carolina."

The university also will continue its track record of using need-based scholarships and aid to meet 100 percent of the demonstrated financial needs of undergraduate students through programs such as the Carolina Covenant, which promises qualified low-income students a debt-free education and has served as a national model for preserving affordability and accessibility. Both need- and merit-based aid for students supports the university’s parallel goals of promoting access and excellence, as well as effectively recruiting, enrolling and retaining highly qualified students.

"We intend to intensify our recruitment of students with exceptional academic and leadership potential, but we shall not do this at the expense of our support for need-based awards," Moeser said. "Some institutions have diverted funds from need-based aid to recruit high-ability students. That approach is contrary to our values. Rather, we are building a merit-based scholarship program on a strong foundation that takes care of need first."

Moeser said the $10 million bequest from the Robinson estate will "jump-start" the $60 million campaign for academic scholarships.

"Within a year of investment, we expect this fund will provide $500,000 annually for new merit-based scholarships," he said.

Tom Heath, Robinson’s relative and associate director for finance and administration at the UNC-based Carolina Population Center, said Robinson "didn’t talk much about UNC" but his time in Chapel Hill earning an MBA must have made a lasting impression.

"Despite the fact that he was not a North Carolinian and didn’t spend a significant amount of time in the state, his time at UNC was apparently special enough to him that UNC was the only institutional beneficiary of his estate," Heath said.

Robinson, born in1916 in New York City, was the grandson of immigrants from Northern Ireland. He attended public elementary and secondary schools in New York.

After graduating from high school in 1934, he worked as a bank clerk for National City Bank, which awarded him a college scholarship that allowed him to attend Columbia University.

He spent three years at Columbia and then enlisted in the U.S. Army, marking the beginning of his lifetime career in the military. He first served at Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, N.C., and later was admitted into Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning in Columbus, Ga. He served at various posts in the United States and Europe through 1949 and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel.

Robinson met his wife, Lillian "Tommy" Tombacher, in 1945 in Frankfurt, Germany. She also was an army officer, serving as a translator for Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower during World War II. They married in September 1949.

Briefly leaving the military in 1949, Robinson worked for the United Parcel Service and purchased 100 shares of the company’s stock. Those shares increased tremendously in number and value over the years and represented most of his estate – and the source of his bequest to Carolina – at the time of his death.

Robinson rejoined the military later in 1949 after being offered a commission. He served initially as the executive officer to the commander at Ft. Myer in Arlington, Va., and then held several posts at the Pentagon as well as in Frankfurt and Paris.

It was after his stint in Paris that Robinson came to Carolina and received a master’s of business administration. He then returned to the Pentagon and later held posts that included the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., Korea and the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., where he was chief of staff.

Robinson retired from the army in 1971 and moved with his wife to Boca Raton, Fla. They later settled in San Antonio, Texas. Tommy Robinson died there in 1995; John in 2004.

The estate gift they left behind builds on several major initiatives aimed at boosting Carolina’s merit-based scholarship offerings.

Last year, the UNC Board of Trustees approved devoting proceeds from the sale of trademark-licensed products to scholarships and financial aid. Previously, 75 percent of these funds had been dedicated to need-based aid. Now, the other 25 percent of these funds go to new merit-based scholarships. That created 55 additional merit-based scholarships for this year.

The university offers excellent merit-based scholarship programs including the Morehead, modeled after the Rhodes at Oxford, and, more recently, the Robertson, offered jointly with Duke University through generous private funding. Carolina also enrolls more than 130 National Merit Scholars each year.

And even before the $60 million academic scholarships drive, new merit- and need-based scholarships ranked among the Carolina First Campaign’s top priorities.

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For a full transcript of Moeser’s speech, visit www.unc.edu. 

Contact: Dr. Jerome Lucido, (919) 966-3623, jlucido@admissions.unc.edu