The Lasting Impact of a Scholarship

In 1998, an alumni couple in Wyoming with a generous spirit and a beloved labrador retriever named Starr decided they wanted to help other aspiring Spartans from their home state attend MSU for free.

So they did what anyone with the means and motivation to make young people’s dreams come true would do: they anonymously set up a four-year full-ride scholarship, named it after their dog, and awarded it to three exceptional high school graduates (hailing from Dubois, Riverton, and Lander, WY, respectively) who started at MSU in the fall of ’98.

In the 25 years that followed, three students per year became four, four became seven, which became ten, then thirteen, then eighteen students per year. The scholarship’s geographic reach expanded in 2012, welcoming students from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to apply, in addition to those from across Wyoming.

In total, more than 230 MSU students received the STARR Scholarship, which covered tuition and fees, room and board, books, and other miscellaneous expenses for the duration of their undergraduate studies—enabling them to throw themselves fully into their academics, their extracurriculars, and their passion projects, and graduate entirely debt-free.

To this day, the identity of their benefactors (fondly known as Mr. and Mrs. STARR) remains a well-kept secret. But what isn’t a secret is how deeply the STARR Scholarship changed their lives for the better.

Here are some of their stories.