Hye Sharzhoom Armenian Action
Staff Report
Armenian Studies Program Coordinator Prof. Barlow Der Mugrdechian announced that the Thomas A. Kooyumjian Family Foundation has made a donation of $100,000 to the Kooyumjian Endowed Scholarship Fund. This is in addition to an initial gift of $50,000 which established the Endowed Scholarship in 2018.
Thomas A. Kooyumjian passed away in 1985 and his Foundation was established in 1987.
The goals of the Foundation are to encourage education, with an emphasis on the appreciation of fine arts. Kooyumjian was an employee and inventor at Belmor Manufacturing and excelled in his field, but also wanted to embrace the finer arts and encourage the same in others.
The current President of the Foundation is Tony Kooyumjian.
Over the past several years the Foundation has supported many projects of the Armenian Studies Program, including co-sponsoring piano concerts in conjunction with the Philip Lorenz Keyboard Concert Series at Fresno State.
They recently supported the Armenian Studies Program organized conference on “A Peoples’ History of the Ottoman Empire: Armenians, Greeks, and Kurds” held September 22-23, 2017 and the Chilingirian-Bagratuni-Hakobyan Trio Concert held March 2.
One of the Foundation’s goals is to encourage all generations to experience and be educated in the effects of fine arts on society as a whole.
The Foundation is also one of the sponsors of the Armenian Genocide Monument on the Fresno State campus.
The Kooyumjian Endowed Scholarship will benefit students within the Armenian Studies Program, in the College of Arts and Humanities at Fresno State. Scholarship recipients will be known as the Thomas A. Kooyumjian Scholars in Armenian Studies.
Per the endowment’s conditions, recipients shall have a) a cumulative GPA of 3.0 or greater; shall be b) enrolled in any course within the Armenian Studies Program at Fresno State, and c) recipients shall have submitted a personal statement speaking to the applicant’s financial need.