Navy veteran and Stony Brook alum Steven Allard has donated $25,000 to his alma mater to establish a scholarship fund to benefit full-time students who are veterans of the United States Armed Services.
“It was important for me to close the circle,” said Allard, 67, who served in the U.S. Navy for six years during the Vietnam War and earned a bachelor’s in environmental studies from Stony Brook in 1977.
“It’s wonderful to have the ability to pay back an institution that certainly had a lot to do with my career success.”
The Steven Allard Returning Military Personnel Endowed Scholarship Fund will be available to veterans of any U.S. military branch.
Allard, a retired banking industry executive who most recently worked for the French bank Societe Generale as a credit risk manager, recalled the financial help he received at Stony Brook and the GI Bill when he enrolled at the university in 1974.
“In addition to the help I received from the GI Bill, I received a veteran scholarship from the State of New York,” he said. “It helped me to buy books and helped take care of other expenses. It made my life a little easier.”
Allard also remembers his mentor at Stony Brook – sociology professor Andrew Collver, who retired in 1999 after teaching 32 years at Stony Brook and is now an emeritus faculty member at the university.
“We spent a lot of time talking about my education and he helped me to develop the holistic perspective that enabled me to be successful in my career,” said Allard, who lived in Port Jefferson during his time at Stony Brook and who now lives in Highland Park, N.J. “He was a mentor to all of us.”
Allard attended Stony Brook’s Wolfstock homecoming event last September. He said he was amazed at how Stony Brook has physically transformed since his graduation.
“The growth of the campus has been pretty impressive,” he said. “It gives me a tremendous amount of pride to make such a worthy investment at Stony Brook.”
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