Raleigh couple endows VGCC Scholarship
Bike rides recently led a couple of Raleigh cycling enthusiasts to endow a new scholarship at Vance-Granville Community College. Smith Doss and his wife, Claude Genevieve Monnier, both of Raleigh, often ride in the area served by the college: Vance, Granville, Franklin and Warren counties. “As we have ridden through, we have become aware of the needs of the area,” Doss said. “We know there are serious economic challenges here, and there’s a great need to help local meritorious individuals get opportunities for training that may give them access to more marketable skills and ultimately better jobs.”
Feeling that the community college is the area’s key job training and economic development resource, the two have established the Smith Doss and Claude Monnier Academic Achievement scholarship. The scholarship is scheduled to be awarded to a VGCC student for the first time in 2010. Preferences will be given to students who are single parents and to those who are working on improving their math skills or studying in a math-intensive program. “Since my wife and I work in technical fields, we know how important math is to succeeding in various occupations and industries,” Doss said. “We have been very fortunate. Helping institutions and causes we care about is a meaningful and useful way to give back.”
Doss and his wife believe in the power of education. The descendants of farmers and coal miners, Doss and Monnier said that later generations of their families were able to climb up the social ladder because of the availability of affordable education, and their own hard work. Doss, a software engineer for IBM, earned degrees at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington and the University of South Carolina. Monnier, a Client Partner Manager for the e-Procurement software company SciQuest, is a graduate of the Lycee du Parc Imperial in Nice, France, the Institut Universitaire de Technologie de Nice and the Universite de Nice. “Our country’s future lies in part in the educational opportunities afforded to young people today,” Doss said.
The VGCC scholarship is not the couple’s first. They established a Computer Science scholarship at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, and created a scholarship in memory of Doss’s mother, a longtime teacher, at her alma mater, Berry College in Georgia.
The new scholarship will add to the more than 5,000 VGCC scholarships awarded since 1982, which have been funded by interest earned on the Endowment Fund and Scholarship Program. In 2007-2008, approximately 75 percent of VGCC students received some sort of scholarship or financial aid.
Above: From left, Claude Monnier and Smith Doss present their gift to VGCC President Randy Parker and Vice President of Institutional Advancement/Endowment Director Jo Anna Jones . (VGCC photo)
