CU-Boulder Chancellor Richard Byyny announced today that Melissa and Anthony Moores have donated $1.1 million in a challenge grant to increase the availability of graduate fellowships in the University of Colorado at Boulder聮s Graduate School.
Anthony Moores, a 1977 graduate of CU-Boulder聮s Graduate School of Education, and his daughter, Melissa, requested that their gift be applied to graduate fellowships throughout the campus.
"Our hope is that by specifying this as a challenge grant, other donors -- whether alumni or corporate -- will step forward with similar contributions for graduate fellowships," said Anthony Moores.
The graduate fellowships will provide the most talented graduate students with a living stipend or teaching salary while they attend classes. They also will serve as recruiting tools to assist the university in attracting top graduate students to the campus.
Although a number of CU-Boulder聮s graduate programs were ranked highly in March by US News and World Report, including environmental law, music, speech language and pathology, education and engineering and applied science, graduate fellowships on the Boulder campus still lag behind some major public research universities. The Moores聮 gift will help address that disparity.
"If we聮re to continue to attract the quality of top graduate student that we have in the past, we must become more competitive in this area," said Carol Lynch, dean of CU-Boulder聮s Graduate School. "The Moores聮 donation couldn聮t have come at a more opportune time in the life of our fund-raising initiative. We can聮t thank him enough for what this will do to assist our best and brightest graduate students."
After what Anthony Moores termed a "less than focused" high school career, he joined the Air Force with his brother, Barry, and was trained in computer programming. Upon his separation from the service, he returned home to his Texas roots and earned a degree in Criminal Justice from Sam Houston State University, in Huntsville, where he also worked as a guard at the Wynne Unit.
Drug and alcohol counseling led him to Denver, where the GI Bill helped him through CU聮s Graduate School of Education.
Moores was a substitute teacher for a brief period in Fort Bend County, Texas, before joining his brother John, who owned BMC Cos. BMC is a software firm that markets data management software primarily to the banking and oil industries. In 1991, he partnered with his brother in founding JMI Equity Fund.
CU-Boulder聮s "Campaign for Colorado" is a $300 million fund-raising initiative for the Boulder campus. More than $163 million has been raised for all campus programs, in an initiative now in its fourth year.