Scholarship Event Celebrates Top Isenberg Students

Isenberg's annual Scholarship Celebration on April 24 at the Log Cabin in Holyoke awarded more than $460,000 in privately funded scholarships and honors to 120 deserving students. The gathering of 300 students, parents, alumni, and faculty heard rousing remarks from Dean Fuller, Associate Undergraduate Dean Linda Shea, and Isenberg's Director of Development, Andrew Clendinneng.

Student speaker Zackery Deckler '15 applauded "the quality of people-students, faculty, alumni, and staff-who make up this remarkable school." A dual degree candidate in Sport Management and Finance, Deckler praised the School's encouragement of experiential opportunities, including his recent internship with CMC: Civilian Military Combine, a start-up in Greater New York that coordinates a team-based endurance race. This summer, with support from an Isenberg scholarship established by the Stratton family, Deckler will focus on international finance in an overseas program at the Copenhagen Business School.  

"Before Isenberg I was a somewhat backward guy from a small town in Vermont," Brent Bottamini '98 told the gathering. With an Isenberg finance degree and positions as a portfolio analyst and asset manager with Fidelity and his present employer, Manulife, his world has changed: "I have traveled the world and managed sums of money that I never could have conceived of," he remarked. In praising the quality and affordability of his education, Bottamini, who has created his own family scholarship for Isenberg students, added: "It's clear to me that many students can use a helping hand. I urge you all to give back."