Posted on December 15, 2012

Alumnus Commits $5 Million for Ohio State University Travel Scholarships

Ohio State University has announced a $5 million commitment from alumnus and former Coach, Inc. president Keith Monda and his wife, Linda, to the College of Arts and Sciences for international travel scholarships.

The gift will supplement the Keith and Linda Monda International Experience Scholarships, which the couple created in 2011 with a gift of $5 million, bringing their total support for the scholarships to $10 million. Within four years, the original gift will fund fifty scholarships a year for arts and sciences students who would not otherwise be able to afford to study abroad. Monda scholarships will average $6,000 per student to cover travel, housing, program fee, and other costs, excluding tuition.

"Our objective was to do a little bit to level the playing field, to make sure that everybody who has an interest in understanding the broader world has the opportunity to do that," said Monda, who earned bachelor's and master's degrees in economics at Ohio State and serves as an Ohio State University Foundation board member, chairs the College of Arts and Sciences' Advisory Committee, and is campaign chair of the College of Arts and Sciences Capital Campaign. "If you look around this troubled world that we live in, maybe some of the problems wouldn't be as extreme if people at least understood the other individual's point of view."