ST. LOUIS — A bold pledge by the new chancellor of Washington University is opening up this campus to the community.
The Wash U pledge, as it's called, was announced by chancellor Andrew Martin on Thursday.
"Focus here on home, for students coming from the state of Missouri from the southern part of Illinois and say, 'we want you to stay here in the St. Louis region and be part of Washington University,'" Martin said.
Effective fall 2020, it'll give a free education to students from low-income families.
"We're going to see a student body that looks even more like the demographics of our country," Martin said.
It will cover the costs of tuition, room and board as well as fees for applicants who are admitted as full-time students.
"It's important to me because I've been able to teach so many students over the years who, if we didn't have programs like this, wouldn't be able to be my students," Martin said.
One of those students, chemical engineering major Saima Choudhury, came from Houston to St. Louis on a scholarship based on academic excellence and diversity.
"I definitely wouldn't have come here without it," Choudhury said.
She says the need for an initiative like this is long overdue.
"Similar schools in Wash U's caliber are doing way better and Wash U's goal was to pretty much do average, so I thought that was disappointing -- so it's nice that they're making active efforts."
And she hopes the university doesn't stop here.
"There's definitely a lot of improvement to be done in supporting students who don't come from the same background that majority of students here come from," Choudhury said.
The eligible counties are shown in the map below:
