The Award is designed to encourage and support in a special way the education and career of one music student at each school who has achieved a high level of musical and academic excellence, demonstrated leadership, and contributed to an inclusive community.
For years, the Foundation invited schools to apply to be in the program if they showed evidence of meeting high professional standards for faculty, curriculum, and facilities and if they maintained a minimum of sixty undergraduate music majors.
The minimum enrollment number prevented many schools with smaller, yet still excellent, music programs from applying. Keeping in mind its efforts to center equity, the Scholar Award Committee recommended proactively expanding the program to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) that are accredited by the National Association of Schools of Music (NASM) regardless of the number of undergraduate music majors in their programs.
Institutions that were in the program last year have been invited to participate for the 2023-24 year, including many HSIs and an HBCU that have a long history in the program.
