Gifts and Gratitude
Promise Scholarship: Investing in an Individual Student’s Future
Doreen DeLaney Crawley ’91 traces her path to executive vice president and chief operations officer of Grange Insurance back to the people at Ohio Wesleyan, like Nancy Bihl Rutkowski, in the Student Involvement Office, and those who made it possible for her to afford college at all.
“I remember one semester I got a $250 scholarship from the black alumni association and I was able to buy all my books, and it meant so much to me that those alums would come and do that,” she recalls.
“Ohio Wesleyan accepted me. Even though I looked different and I didn’t have the same ‘pedigree’ when I got here, I feel like I left here very much on the same trajectory as the other students,” she says. “Ohio Wesleyan was a place for me to begin to get my leadership chops.”
DeLaney Crawley has risen through the corporate ranks, first at what’s now JP Morgan Chase – where she interned while at OWU – and most recently at Grange.
Remembering the uncertainty that financial stress can cause for a student, DeLaney Crawley established three Promise Scholarships with her gift to the Connect Today, Create Tomorrow campaign, each of which includes $5,000 per year for all four years of the student’s undergraduate experience.
“I’m investing in someone’s future the way that so many people at Ohio Wesleyan invested in me,” she says.