McCaffery Homes is creating opportunities for future city planners with a $25,000 gift to fund scholarships for Fresno State students.
Robert and Karen McCaffrey’s legacy of giving continues with their son, Brent McCaffrey, and son-in-law, Ash Knowlton, for whom the scholarship is named.
The McCaffrey-Knowlton Scholarship at Fresno State will fund two $2,500 scholarships per year for the next five years for students in the College of Social Science’s Department of Geography, City and Regional Planning.
As third-generation real estate developers, Knowlton and Brent McCaffrey said they co-founded the company McCaffrey and Knowlton with a mission to create vibrant, high-quality communities support sustainable growth in the region.
“In the spirit of our family and with the belief that education is the key to our future, we are proud to make this donation to Fresno State and continue the tradition of giving back to our community,” Knowlton said. “The McCaffrey-Knowlton Scholarship provides $25,000 to support students in a major that has great impact on the quality of life in the region by advancing the knowledge of city and regional planning.”
“Giving back to the community is at the core of our company’s culture and our family’s values. We are grateful to be able to contribute to the growth at Fresno State that this scholarship will support,” Brent McCaffrey said. “We’re proud of our family’s efforts to give back to our community. Ash and I are delighted to continue that legacy at McCaffrey & Knowlton and support such a deserving organization as Fresno State.”
According to Dr. Luz Gonzalez, dean of the College of Social Science, the geography, city and regional planning degree option will be available pending CSU approval, but they expect to admit the first group of students in fall 2015. The McCaffrey-Knowlton Scholarship will be available to those students next year.
“College and department visions are often created with valuable input from community members. I am especially grateful to Karen McCaffrey, who at a meeting with me years ago brought to light the needs for our university to reinstate a planning degree,” said Dr. Luz Gonzalez, dean of the College of Social Science. “She believed that if we offered a city and regional planning degree, students interested in the field would not leave the Valley to study the discipline. We agreed that growing our own planners gives us a better chance of keeping them in our Valley where they are desperately needed.”
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