Kurt L. Schmoke, the new president of the University of Baltimore, has announced a scholarship fund to benefit Baltimore students enrolled in UBalts's College of Public Affairs. The scholarship is named for Schmoke's younger brother, Murray Alexander Schmoke Jr., who died in a 1994 car accident while volunteering as an English teacher in South Africa.
"My brother, Alex, viewed himself as a citizen of the world, fervently committed to lifelong learning," President Schmoke said. "His interest in public affairs is what led him to his work in South Africa. I know he would be thrilled about this association with the University of Baltimore."
Established with a $25,000 gift from President Schmoke, the Murray Alexander Schmoke Jr. Memorial Scholarship Fund will provide annual need-based financial support to a selected UBalt College of Public Affairs junior or senior undergraduate student who is a graduate of a Baltimore-based public high school. The student must have a minimum 3.0 grade point average to be eligible and must also maintain that GPA or higher for the life of the scholarship. The University of Baltimore Foundation will maintain the scholarship fund.
Alex Schmoke Jr. graduated from Baltimore City College and Morehouse College before working for T. Rowe Price and then for a Washington, D.C.-based group that raised money for black South African medical students to travel to the United States. During Kurt Schmoke's tenure as the mayor of Baltimore, his 25-year-old brother joined other volunteers in teaching English to 11th graders at Pax College, a Catholic mission school in the rural town of Pietersberg, South Africa. In a 1994 Baltimore Sun article, former Pax College volunteer Patrick T. McCabe described the younger Schmoke as a "real role model" and noted his popularity with the students. "He had a presence with them," McCabe said.
Read media coverage about the scholarship in The Daily Record (subscription recquired).
The University of Baltimore is a member of the University System of Maryland and comprises the College of Public Affairs, the Merrick School of Business, the UBalt School of Law and the Yale Gordon College of Arts and Sciences.