Liquid Assets

Bryan Meltz

Students at Goizueta Business School and the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing are becoming their families’ first college graduates, thanks to financial help from The Coca-Cola Foundation.

For Dashika Ellis OX11 13N, the Coca-Cola Emory Advantage Scholarship alleviated financial concerns, allowing her to focus on preparing for a career in geriatric nursing. She will be the first in her family to earn a college degree. “My education gives my family members hope, including my mother, who now wishes to pursue her first degree, and even my grandmother, who wants to obtain her GED,” says Ellis.

These scholarships are funded as part of The Coca-Cola Foundation’s $3 million gift to Campaign Emory in 2008, which also made possible Sustainable Partnerships for Atlanta Neighborhoods, a service-learning initiative at Emory. The Coca-Cola funding boosted a scholarship program designed to help make an Emory education accessible to any qualified student. The campaign gift is part of $19 million that The Coca-Cola Foundation invested between 2002 and 2010 in educating more than one thousand first-generation students nationwide.