Lake Michigan College is inviting graduating high school seniors within its district to learn more about the Red Hawk Futures Scholarship program.
LMC Vice President of Advancement Doug Schaffer tells us the program was started last year to encourage more young people to go to college.
“The Red Hawk Future Program guarantees free tuition for all in-district, local high school graduates to prevent any kind of barriers to continuing their education after high school,” Schaffer said. “We are blessed that over the years we’ve been able to build a strong scholarship endowment program through the Lake Michigan College Foundation.”
In the program’s first year, enrollment of local high school graduates at LMC went up 36%. Schaffer said LMC wanted to get aggressive about attracting young students after troubling national trends.
“Up until last year, only 40% of recent high school graduates were showing up on college campuses anywhere. That wasn’t just going to LMC, it was any college campus anywhere. So, certainly that’s an alarming data point here locally and the trend is similar across the state.”
The Red Hawk Futures Scholarship program is funded through the LMC Winners Circle Endowment Fund, which is supported by the Winners Circle Auction each year. Schaffer says the endowment fund has more than $4.5 million and will pay out $225,000 in the 2024-2025 academic year for Red Hawk Futures Scholarships.
Any high school students interested in learning more can go to LakeMichiganCollege.edu/Futures.
