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 in January of 2019 to the Kooyumjian Endowed Scholarship Fund at Fresno State. Together with previous donations from the Family Foundation, the Endowed Scholarship has reached $250,000.
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.
The Kooyumjian Endowed Scholarship will benefit students within the Armenian Studies Program, in the College of Arts and Humanities at Fresno State.
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.
The Kooyumjian Family Foundation made a donation of $25,000 in January of 2019 to the Armenian Studies Program. The grant was made for special events held by the Program throughout the year.
The Kooyumjian Foundation has a special interest in the appreciation of fine arts, especially music, in keeping with Thomas A. Kooyumjian’s interests. This grant included support for the very successful Tigran Hamasyan concert held on October 19, 2018, before a sell-out crowd of 400.
The Foundation also supported the Armenian Studies Program organized conference on “The Committee of Union and Progress: Founders, Ideology, and Structure” held October 12-13, 2018.
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.
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.