The Georgetown Scholars Program (GSP) was founded in 2004 as a joint initiative between the Office of Undergraduate Admissions and the Office of Financial Aid, bolstered by the enthusiastic support of alumni volunteers. The program’s initial purpose was to attract, enroll, and retain more first-generation low-income (FGLI) students through the formation of a new scholarship. This scholarship reduced the loan amount for selected FGLI students. In its early days, GSP primarily consisted of financial support through the scholarship itself. As such, its programming was very limited. Missy Foy C’03, then an admissions officer at Georgetown, recalls how one student changed all of this:
In the spring of 2006, when we admitted the second cohort of students, my boss, Dean Deacon, suggested that current GSPers should call the new cohort of students and tell them to come to Georgetown. So, we did a phone-calling night. At this phone-calling night, Amy Hang (COL ‘09), a member of our first cohort, bounded up to me in the admissions office and said “You’re involved in this thing, right? You requested that we come here tonight and I’m happy to do it,” and I said “Yeah.” She told me, “Thanks so much for the scholarship, but I almost drowned here my freshman year.” She articulated a number of different challenges that she felt were pretty hard to overcome here at Georgetown. She thought that we couldn’t bring in another cohort of students until we had some more support. She was right. There was no “program” aspect of the Georgetown Scholars Program.
With Dean Deacon’s support, Amy Hang became the first paid student employee of GSP and we consider her to be one of the program’s founders. With Amy’s help, and Missy Foy’s work on GSP as a side hustle, GSP began to develop as a true program, incorporating: a student board; intramural sports; events; mentorship and advising; financial support; and advocacy. In 2008, after there were over 200 GSP students on campus, the university approved a full-time position to work with the students and Missy was appointed as its inaugural director.
GSP’s first employee, Amy Hang, surrounded by her family at graduation, where she spoke at Senior Convocation. Hang now lives in her home state of Minnesota with her husband and baby, where she works as a lawyer, championing the needs of Hmong American people and others.
In 2019, the program was officially renamed to the Georgetown Scholars Program to reflect how the program has evolved beyond a scholarship as it continues to provide programmatic support, advising and mentorship, and advocacy and empowerment.
Many years later, GSP is a fully-endowed program with 6 full-time staff members. It has a relaxing student lounge whose location will be returning to Georgetown’s iconic Healy Hall in 2024. Its students graduate at an incredible rate of 94%, compared to the 26% rate among first-generation college students nationally. In 2021, it was ranked the best college on its “return on investment” for low-income students. There have been over 2,000 GSP graduates since Amy’s inaugural Class of 2009. From its origins to its outcomes, GSP has always been a student-centered and student-driven organization.