The Finish Line Fund isn’t new to the College of Communication Arts and Sciences.
Supported by yearly gifts from ComArtSci alum Anne Wright (’83) and her husband Tom, the fund has already distributed a total of $160,000 in grants to 51 students since 2022.
Now, with an additional $1 million gift, Anne and Tom Wright have created an endowment to ensure that the Finish Line Fund will be available for students in need for generations to come.
True to its name, the fund exists to help students in their senior year overcome financial challenges that could affect their ability to graduate — or, “cross the finish line” of their college careers — on time. It is a lifeline for them, and a powerful tool for the team whose job is to help those students complete their degrees and realize their dreams.
“At a time when affordability and accessibility are central conversations in higher education nationally, we have a responsibility to both open the door to ComArtSci students, and to help them successfully make it through that door and across the finish line on the Breslin Center stage,” says Heidi Hennink-Kaminski, dean of the College of Communication Arts and Sciences.
“We are immeasurably grateful to Anne and Tom and the Finish Line Fund for giving the gift of graduation to students — past, present, and future — who can see the finish line but wouldn’t be able to get there without this support.”
Today’s graduates deserve what yesterday’s had
Anne Wright may have graduated more than 40 years ago, but she has never stopped being an example of everything a person can do with a communications degree.
Her own degree has taken her so many places, from being the logistical brain behind the first-ever national symposium of experts in the then-far-less-ubiquitous field of A.I. in the mid-1980s, to her current role, as the communications side of the partnership in the business she and her husband co-founded.
She wants today’s ComArtSci grads to enter the world with the same preparedness she had, to go anywhere and do anything.
“Students who graduate — with any degree — are simply in a better position to get a well-paying job. A degree is an opportunity to make more money over a lifetime!” Anne says. “But the degree itself is expensive, and for a student to have invested so much already, and then be unable to finish their senior year for financial reasons? It simply shouldn’t happen.”
And it didn’t happen back in Anne’s day.
“Nobody was leaving school because they didn’t have enough money to finish. If you needed money for school, a part-time job was enough to pay your way. It’s not like that now, and that’s not right,” she says. “That’s why we created Finish Line, and why we’re committed to helping the fund grow.”
An infrastructure for solving structural problems
Allison Shaw, the director of student success and retention, and Kari Schueller Lopez, associate dean for undergraduate education, both in the College of Communication Arts and Sciences, are part of a college-wide effort to make sure students don’t fall through the financial cracks.
Shaw runs a program called Compassionate Advocates for Retention and Student Success (CARSS), which was created to help students through all kinds of challenges they might face during their college career, including financial challenges.
“Money issues can very quickly become academic issues, and that’s where we come in,” Shaw says. “A sudden slide in an otherwise solid academic performance might indicate that a student’s attention is divided, perhaps between their studies and their ability to pay their bills.
“Or they might have a hold on their account, and they may not even be aware of it until they try to register for their last semester’s classes or, worse, put in their application for graduation and find it was denied due to an unpaid balance.”
These issues are symptoms of a larger, structural problem around how much college costs, and how the definition of financial need doesn’t necessarily meet the moment.
Sometimes a family makes too much money to be eligible for significant federal aid (like a Pell Grant), but doesn’t make enough money pay out of pocket, in full, for tuition. Sometimes, a student gets some financial aid, but it runs out before they’ve completed all the credits they need in a given year. This is especially common if a student takes a full courseload during the fall and spring semesters, but also takes summer classes.
And, sometimes, life just throws unexpected curveballs: a health crisis, the loss of a job, a family emergency — anything that could put a strain on a student’s financial situation.
The strain isn’t small.
“Funding gaps have gotten bigger,” Lopez says. “It isn’t just that a student comes up short a couple hundred dollars here or there anymore. These days, with the increased cost of living factored in — plus the increased cost of everything else a student needs to complete their degree — those gaps have grown to $8,000, $9,000, even $15,000 that a student or their family is responsible for paying.”
That’s where the Finish Line Fund comes in.
“We’ve got emergency funds to help students in small ways — for immediate needs like housing or food insecurity, books, supplies, things like that. But Finish Line is helping us address these larger, structural issues that are real barriers to graduation,” Lopez says. “We’re lucky to have it, and to be able to offer it to our ComArtSci students when they need it the most.”
In a perfect world, these challenges and structural barriers wouldn’t exist.
But in a different version of a perfect world, more people like Anne and Tom Wright — and more funds like Finish Line — would be around to help.
“The opportunity to help a student cross the graduation finish line is truly a life-changing gift,” Anne and Tom agree. “Providing this final piece of funding delivers more than financial relief. It restores mental peace, and builds the academic momentum hard-working students need to achieve their dreams.”