How Far Can a Scholarship’s Impact Really Go? It’s Further Than You Might Think.

When Jim Keblinger ’53 created a scholarship to support a handful of students from his hometown of Jasper, Texas, he did so knowing exactly what kind of gift he wanted to build: one that would last forever.

As an endowed scholarship, his gift was invested in the Texas A&M Foundation’s collective Endowment for the university, allowing it to grow and generate support eternally. Because of that, it’s still changing lives today, long after he wrote the first check and even after his own passing.

That’s the power of endowed giving: one gift, structured to last.

But endowed scholarships don’t just impact the lives of the Aggies who receive them. Like a row of dominoes, one act of generosity has a way of starting a chain reaction that reaches more people than the donor could ever imagine. These stories from individuals impacted by different scholarships in various ways put that power on full display.

Linda Nicolosi: A Daughter Continuing a Legacy

For Keblinger, the family Aggie legacy began when he left home to study range and forestry in Aggieland. After spending decades away, he found his way back to Texas A&M University for retirement. He and his wife, Carol, bought season football tickets and realized soon after that they wanted to help students get to school, not just cheer them on. Carol, a longtime Cypress ISD teacher, became the namesake of the couple’s first scholarship, an Endowed Opportunity Award (EOA) that would support students from Cypress Creek High School for all four years of their Aggie journey.

That scholarship led to three more EOAs for students from Keblinger’s hometown, and he made it a point to know all his scholars personally: lunches, three or four visits a year, weddings, baby gifts, even a quilt one student made his family. “My father showed me that life is nothing without connections and relationships,” said his daughter, Linda Nicolosi.

Nicolosi isn’t an Aggie herself but grew close to scholars at her father’s side after Carol’s passing. When Keblinger also passed, she discovered that one last scholarship of her parents’ wasn’t quite funded. The family came together to finish it with memorial gifts, and Nicolosi took over the seat Keblinger held for decades: a donor who shows up and invests personally. “My father showed me that scholarships should have a personal connection,” she said. “I hope recipients of his generosity invest in connections and future Aggies just like he did.”

Raul Lopez ’27: A Scholar With a Bright Future

Raul Lopez ’27 is a recipient of one of Keblinger’s hometown scholarships. He’s also one of only a handful from his graduating class who left for a four-year university at all, the first in his family to go to college and the first Aggie his parents have ever known. He credits a sixth grade teacher, Ms. Jensen, with making him feel capable of something big for the first time. Because of her, he decided that he wanted to attend Texas A&M and become a teacher too.

Lopez was working his shift as a waiter, a job he’s held since he was 16, when the scholarship email arrived. He hugged his manager, came home and told his parents, who cried tears of joy with him. Months later, he walked them through campus for the first time. Neither had ever set foot on a university before; they’d come to the United States hoping for exactly this kind of chance for their children. Watching them take it in, he said, was one of his most treasured memories of his time at Texas A&M.

While Lopez never got the chance to meet Keblinger, he said that if he could meet the man who made his scholarship possible, he’d start with a hug.

David Schell ’97 ’03: A Former Scholar Paying It Forward

Like Lopez, David Schell ’97 ’03 knows what it’s like to be on the other side of a scholarship he never got to thank the original donor for. A second-generation Aggie who majored in biochemistry, genetics and computer science before staying on for a Ph.D., he was a Robert H. McLemore ’33 President’s Endowed Scholar and never met his donor. He always intended to close that gap for someone else. So when his career as a senior patent agent for Thermo Fisher put him in a position to do just that, he didn’t hesitate.

He and his wife, Margaret ’97, have built a current EOA named for his parents and an Aggie Ring scholarship, in addition to naming the Texas A&M Foundation as the beneficiary of their life insurance policy to create a future President’s Endowed Scholarship of their own. They also participate in the Foundation’s Adopt A Scholar program that has allowed them to “adopt” a current scholar whose donor has passed away.

Through the program and their other scholarships, they’ve gotten to personally know some high-achieving students. “It’s amazing to meet these students and learn what they’re doing and plan to do,” he said. “They will go out and change the world for the better.”
 

Patricia Espinoza: A Grateful Mom

For years, Patricia Espinoza has been watching her daughter, Stephanie Landeros ’26, refuse to settle, studying until three in the morning some nights to chase an A when a B would have been perfectly fine. “She always said, ‘No, I’m going for the A,’” Espinoza reflected. “She’s never settled for anything less than her best.”

Landeros is the first in the family to attend college, drawn to nursing partly so she could use both languages she grew up speaking, and to Texas A&M because she’d passed the campus her whole life and always told her parents she’d be an Aggie. An EOA through the Texas A&M Women’s Club, along with a full-ride scholarship from the Greater Texas Foundation, made it possible.

This spring, Espinoza watched her daughter walk the stage as a college graduate with a job already lined up as a labor and delivery nurse. The proud mom cried tears of joy throughout the ceremony, cheering on the daughter she'd always known would accomplish something great. “If I could speak to the donors who made my daughter's dream possible, I wouldn’t know where else to start but thank you,” she said. “You make dreams come true for kids like mine. We couldn't ask for anything more.”