Starting in August 2013, seven Loyola students will be awarded $15,000 a year as a part of a new scholarship program with the Taylor Foundation.

Following negotiations between the foundation and Loyola, the scholarship will be available to all first-year students for the next 12 years. Students must be Louisiana residents, in their first semester out of high school and they must maintain a GPA specific to the Taylor Opportunity Program for Students.

“We do have some individual scholarships at Louisiana State University, University of New Orleans and Xavier but the biggest scholarship will be at Loyola,” James Caillier said, executive director of the Taylor Foundation.

Salvadore Liberto, vice president of enrollment management and associate provost, said Loyola is in the process of deciding how they will select students for the scholarship.

“For the scholarship, we will be looking at students from Louisiana who need significant financial aid and have a strong academic performance in high school, ” Liberto said.

The scholarship will award selected students $60,000 over a four-year span.

Every year from fall 2012 through 2025, the Taylor foundation will give seven new students the scholarship for each graduating class.

“We want the university to select the students who, for whatever reason, could benefit from a scholarship, whether it’s to attract them to Loyola, or to keep them at Loyola, or to offer additional financial support,” Caillier said.

The Taylor Foundation began in Louisiana in the 1970s with Phyllis and Patrick Taylor. In 1989, the foundation also started the Taylor Opportunity Program for Students, which became a state-funded private or public university scholarship program.

“The Taylors have no children, but they wanted to make sure that children in Louisiana could go to college,” Caillier said.

Caillier cited close ties between the foundation and Loyola as a key component in the foundation’s decision to give Loyola over $1 million over the next 12 years. The former university President, the Rev. James Carter, S.J., served on the Taylor Foundation’s education committee.

Caillier said he will return to Loyola’s board of trustees in the fall.

“Those various associations to Fr. Wildes, and me being on the board of trustees, Loyola became the favorite university,” Caillier said.

Eligible students can simultaneously receive both the state-funded scholarships provided by the Taylor Opportunity Program and the privately funded Taylor Foundation scholarship.

Caillier said he has hopes for the new scholarship.

“We want the best and the brightest to go to Loyola and we want to help support their initiative,” Caillier said.

Jessica DeBold can be reached at [email protected]