Despite pending budget cuts and a decrease in revenue, the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine found additional funds to help its top students in their educational endeavors.Vet School Dean Peter Haynes will give an additional $2,000 from the school’s Annual Fund to each of the 20 endowed scholarships as part of an initiative to increase the benefits of Vet School scholarships.Endowed scholarships cannot expire — the school guarantees funding for the recipients regardless of fiscal fluctuations. Funding for the scholarship comes from the interest the school earns from a centrally invested fund, or corpus.”‘Endowed’ means ‘in perpetuity,'” said Judyth Wier, executive director of Institution Advancement. “The initial gift cannot be touched. What is used is the interest earned from the corpus.”Haynes started an initiative to add funding to these scholarships. The school’s goal is to provide each endowed scholarship, which can actually support more than one student, with a $5,000 annual gift.”As the price of vet school goes up, the average indebtedness of students graduating from the School of Veterinary Medicine is over $100,000,” said David Senior, associate dean for Institutional Advancement and Strategic Initiatives. “The dean has a vision to address this issue. [He] wishes to make a major impact on this in a short amount of time.”The money in the Annual Fund comes from private donations from alumni and friends of the school. The dean has the discretionary power to use the money as he pleases.”The dean is able to target specific areas where he feels it will make the most impact,” Senior said.The school typically uses the money from the Annual Fund for scholarships, fellowships, research grants and equipment.”The primary goal is to impact positively the student experience,” Wier said.The addition of $40,000 to the endowed scholarships will help the school’s top students finance their education and allow them to concentrate on their studies and research, Senior said.”The impact is on the students,” he said. “This will substantially offset indebtedness.”Haynes said the upcoming budget cuts will not affect the Annual Fund or the ability of the school to fund the endowed scholarships because the money comes from private donors and not from public sources. He said his school does not have a surplus of funds.”There’s not extra money,” Haynes said. “Our school has a history of being chronically underfunded. We’re a very lean program that makes optimal use of our resources.”Wier said Haynes has been with the Vet School almost since its founding, and he has an intimate grasp of how funding will affect various programs and areas of the school.”He has an innate knowledge of how things work, how things evolve and the impact funds will have,” Wier said.—-Contact Matthew Barnidge at [email protected]