ST. LOUIS — The University of Missouri - Columbia College of Education has announced it received a $1 million donation from a couple with ties to the university to establish scholarships for students to become elementary school teachers.
Mizzou said the donation came from Gary Coles and Patricia McIntosh Coles, who was a longtime school teacher and administrator, including several years of teaching at Columbia Public Schools in the 1980s, according to a release.
Gary Coles graduated from Mizzou in 1981 with a master’s degree in business from the Trulaske College of Business and later returned to teach in the MBA program. He was a senior research scientist at chemicals company DuPont and also served as the director of database marketing for a division of the Reader's Digest Association before retiring in 2004.
Patricia’s passion for education and the desire to invest in the future of education are what led to the donation, she said.
“Investing in education is investing in our future,” said Patricia Coles, who earned the National Parent Teacher Association Life Achievement Award in 2004. “The student-teachers we have at the University of Missouri are going to be teaching the children of the future and we want to give them any kind of help that we can.”
Click here for the full story from the St. Louis Business Journal.
