The University of San Francisco Receives $4.25 Million Gift from the Carl Gellert and Celia Berta Gellert Foundation to Support Bay Area Students
SAN FRANCISCO (January 26, 2023) — The University of San Francisco (USF) has received a gift of $4.25 million from the Carl Gellert and Celia Berta Gellert Foundation to support students coming to USF from the nine counties of the Greater Bay Area. The remainder will go toward the School of Management’s Gellert Family Business Center founded in 2001.
“The foundation has been a longtime supporter backing the university’s efforts for several decades, and it has been steadfast in its investment in the Bay Area community,” said USF President Paul J. Fitzgerald, S.J. “This generous gift culminates our wonderful partnership over several decades. The foundation has been a strong advocate for access to Jesuit education and support for family businesses, and I’m thrilled that we have been able to advance these common goals.”
The Carl Gellert and Celia Berta Gellert Foundation has been serving the Bay Area community and Catholic schools since 1958. The foundation decided recently to sunset its operations, and in the process, USF was selected to receive a significant share of the assets from the dissolution of the foundation.
For the past 40 years, generous scholarship funding from the Gellert Foundation has enabled many first-generation students to access a Jesuit education. Nearly 32% of USF students identify as first-generation to attend college. Since 2014, the Gellert Foundation and USF have been able to award more than 37 first-generation students with scholarships ranging from $5,000 to $10,000 each. To keep Jesuit education accessible for first-generation students, $3.75 million of the recent gift will go toward establishing the Carl Gellert and Celia Berta Gellert Endowed Scholarship Fund.
Over the past two decades, the USF School of Management’s Gellert Family Business Center has become an essential resource hub. The Center supports family businesses with their transition needs and provides support for businesses’ long-term success by facilitating access to critical business resources, hosting networking events, and advancing the field of family business through research and education.
The remaining $500,000 of the Gellert foundation’s most recent gift will go to sustaining the legacy and continuity of the Center, which will allow sliding scale subsidies on membership dues and program tuition payments for qualifying small and medium-sized businesses.
“This new endowment will allow the Center to continue to advance scholarly, creative and community-focused activities that sustain and aid in the continuity of families-in-business as well as the growth of the next generation of family firm leaders,” said Monika Hudson, EdD, Director, Gellert Family Business Center.
About the University of San Francisco
The University of San Francisco is a private, Jesuit Catholic university that reflects the diversity, optimism, and opportunities of the city that surrounds it. USF offers more than 230 undergraduate, graduate, professional, and certificate programs in the arts and sciences, business, law, education, and nursing and health professions. At USF, each course is an intimate learning community in which top professors encourage students to turn learning into positive action, so the students graduate equipped to do well in the world — and inspired to change it for the better. For more information, visit usfca.edu.
About the USF School of Management
Founded in 1925, University of San Francisco’s School of Management is on the forefront of educating the next generation of conscious, mindful business leaders. Each year those students join the over 40,000 School of Management alumni around the world to create ethical and innovative change in the private, public, and non-profit management sectors. The School of Management is accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges Senior College and University Commission (WSCUC) and the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB).