Chestnut Hill College’s Helping Others by Providing Education scholarship is helping adult students who have left school to return so they can finish their degrees, writes Susan Snyder for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

The scholarship was established with a $300,000 gift from 1977 alumna and board member Margaret McCaffery and her husband, Michael. It is available to eligible students in the college’s Accelerated Adult Degree Program who have left school in the last five years but have completed more than 75 percent of their course work. They also need to have at least a 2.5 GPA.

The school contacted 50 students who fit these criteria and heard back from 22. Ultimately, fourteen students have now been enrolled in the first tranche. Classes for the majority of them are starting this week.

“One of the biggest problems we’ve had is many of our students are starting their degree, but they’re running out of aid [when they are] almost to the finish line,” said April Fowlkes, executive director of the accelerated program.

The scholarship money is used to cover students’ existing debt and the costs of their remaining courses.

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