Like Kalamazoo, Denver, Colo., draws on the generosity of wealthy donors to offer college scholarships across the board to graduates of its public schools.

The Kalamazoo Promise and the Denver Scholarship Foundation have more than that in common.

Kalamazoo’s program, though it started first, was not the source of the idea for philanthropists Timothy and Bernadette Marquez, who created the Denver program. But they did research the Kalamazoo effort in deciding how to implement Denver’s program.

More than that, the Kalamazoo Promise appealed to the Michigan pride of Bernadette Marquez, herself a graduate of Kalamazoo County’s Comstock High School.

“I think all of us are really inspired by the Promise,” Bernadette Marquez told the Kalamazoo Gazette last week. “I’m really proud that they’re doing that” in Kalamazoo County.

In November, the couple announced they were donating $50 million for a program that would give every graduate of three Denver high schools scholarships for college. Officials said the Denver Scholarship Foundation would expand to all high schools in the city.

Launched in 2005, the Kalamazoo Promise pays tuition and mandatory fees at any of Michigan’s public universities or colleges. The program began with the class of 2006 and is available to anyone who has attended Kalamazoo schools for at least four years at the time of graduation.

Timothy Marquez, a graduate of Denver’s Abraham Lincoln High School, made his fortune in the oil business.

Bernadette Marquez moved with her family to the Kalamazoo area when she was 7, and her father worked at a General Motors Corp. stamping plant in Comstock. After earning a nursing degree from Michigan State University she moved to Colorado.

There, she met and married Timothy Marquez, then a young petroleum engineer. In 1991, he started the gas and oil company Venoco Inc.

“For us, it’s a no-brainer to give money away,” she said. “I think everybody should give back. … We’re big on education, and we wanted to do something that would really make an impact.”

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 31st, 2006 at 5:34 pm and is filed under Education, Scholarship. Tags: College, Education, Scholarship. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.