SRJC launches scholarship fund drive

<p>Santa Rosa Junior College has launched a fundraising campaign to help recent high school graduates attend the school.</p><p>The program is intended to offset the suspension of the Doyle Scholarship, which has awarded $76 million to nearly 120,000 students in six decades of scholarships funded by Exchange Bank stock dividends.</p><p>But Exchange Bank has suspended its dividend payments in 2009 and no new Doyle applications are being accepted.</p><p>College president Robert Agrella on Thursday announced the Bridging the Doyle campaign at his annual address to the community in front of about 400 school supporters at Haehl Pavilion Thursday.</p><p>“It is not meant in any way, shape or form to replace the Doyle Scholarship program,” Agrella said, noting that he expects the Doyle to rebound.</p><p>The new campaign will be waged in newspapers, radio and through e-mail networking. Agrella said if 10 percent of the approximately 120,000 students who have received Doyle Scholarships since its inception six decades ago contributed $100, the campaign could reach $1.2 million.</p><p>“I don’t think that is an unachievable goal,” he said.</p><p>The fundraising push comes as the school braces itself for another round of cuts as the state grapples with an approximately $21 billion deficit.</p><p>The school cut about $3 million from the current year budget of $115 million and is preparing for another $2 million in cuts before July, according to Agrella. The 2009-10 budget year, which begins in July, could bring another $7 million in cuts, he said.</p><p>That means fewer courses, fewer teachers and an urgency for early registration, he said.</p><p>“Classes with 10 or 12 students are going to be in jeopardy,” he said, adding that next fall’s course catalog is not final.</p><p>“I don’t think this is what this program is about, how dark things are,” Agrella said of the annual luncheon designed to laud campus achievements. “But we can’t totally bypass the fact that as a college, as a state, as nation, as a world, we are in dire times financially.”</p><p>In the immediate future the college “is not going to be quite the same Santa Rosa Junior College that you have seen in the past,” he said. “We are going to be forced to downsize a little bit and ride this wave out.”</p><p>Nevertheless, supporters took time out Thursday to honor Jane and Herb Dwight as recipients of the President’s Medallion for their role in the development of Pepperwood Reserve.</p><p>The 3,100-acre preserve near Knight’s Valley has been opened to junior college courses, work shops and field trips for elementary-through-college students through a partnership between the Dwight’s Pepperwood Foundation and the college.</p><p>“This project would not have enjoyed such wonderful progress without your tremendous support and partnership, so thank you very much Santa Rosa Junior College,” Herb Dwight said.</p>