SWTJC receives $5 million gift

Southwest Texas Junior College is honored to announce that we have received an extraordinary $5 million unrestricted gift to support our mission to enrich lives and advance growth throughout the diverse communities we serve.

In response to the news, SWTJC President, Dr. Hector Gonzales, stated, “This is a transformational gift and the biggest in our history! It will provide us the means to expand our work in serving the students and communities of southwest Texas.”

The gift, which is the largest in the history of the college, is a portion of $2,739,000,000 gifted to 286 “high impact organizations” by MacKenzie Scott who describes herself as a mom, writer, and advocate. Ms. Scott’s contribution recognizes SWTJC’s transformative work in student success and its long-standing history of “educating students who come from communities that have been chronically underserved.”

In 2020, Scott donated $6 billion to organizations involved with COVID-19 relief, gender equity, and historically Black colleges and universities. In a blog post on Tuesday regarding her current round of donations, Scott wrote, “Higher education is a proven pathway to opportunity, so we looked for 2- and 4-year institutions successfully educating students who come from communities that have been chronically underserved… We chose to make relatively large gifts to the organizations named below, both to enable their work, and as a signal of trust and encouragement, to them and to others.”