Taylor Colvin said she had always wanted to attend Texas A&M University after graduating from Rudder High School but that it would not have been possible without the Finis Welch Foundation.

“I had actually decided to go to a completely different school — West Texas A&M [University], up in Canyon,” Colvin said. “I was set on that. I wanted to move away and it was a cheaper, more affordable option.

“Then I got the email, I think at the very end of February, saying I got the Welch Foundation [scholarship] and it would cover all fees and my entire cost of attendance. And so, after receiving that email, it definitely changed my game plan for the next four years.”

The foundation was established in 2012 and Lara Anderson, executive director and president of the organization, said their mission is to provide college scholarships to high-achieving Texas students who might not otherwise be able to afford to attend.

“Our founder, Finis Welch, believed very strongly in education, about the importance of education and so he wanted to do something to be able to give back and to offer these scholarships to selected students,” Anderson said. “These are very bright kids that might not otherwise be able to achieve what they could achieve without the education.”

Welch was a longtime labor economist and professor of economics who worked at Texas A&M from 1991 until 2003. On Aug. 24, 2020, Welch died at the age of 82 after suffering a heart attack.

Following his death, Anderson said Welch donated the vast majority of his estate to the foundation, including a 10,000-acre ranch outside of Centerville.

“He enjoyed ranching; he enjoyed just being able to live in Texas [and] Bryan was kind of his home base,” Anderson said. “We sold the ranch as part of his estate. That was his wish, that the ranch be sold as part of his estate and the proceeds from the sale of the ranch come into the foundation.”

While Anderson said the foundation has added more students every year, she was glad that they were finally able to support a local student through the program.

“We grew to about four new students a year,” she said. “We are now in the process of growing the foundation, both in terms of numbers and in terms of our curriculum and what we provide students.”

When Colvin applied for the scholarship at the beginning of her senior year, she said she believed her time in 4-H and work on other public service projects made her stand out.

“I was very active in 4-H since I was 9 years old,” she said. “I did livestock judging and all of the activities, leadership roles and positions. I was even on the Texas 4-H State Council and an FFA officer as well.”

During her sophomore year, Colvin said she started her own project to help local families.

“I created my own community service project called Helping Happy Wheels where we collected snacks and coloring books and utensils to go to the Ronald McDonald houses and to be distributed to families,” she said.

After receiving confirmation that she could attend Texas A&M, Colvin, who will major in animal science, said she was ecstatic.

“It was definitely a weight lifted off my my shoulders because going to college is stressful,” she said. “I was already in the midst of filling out other scholarship applications just to cover the cost of going to West Texas A&M and so whenever I got that email it was just kind of a sigh of relief because I could go to the college that I actually really wanted to go to without the stress of having to worry about paying for it.”

Anderson said they plan to keep expanding the program and that they have plans to start working with the University of Texas.

“In the past, basically we had just written the checks, which is not a small thing, but we had minimal contact with our students and now we’re trying to have a lot more contact with them,” she said. “We are working with the University of Texas as well, so we will be having students both here at A&M and the University of Texas.”