Matthew Loar ’07 Selected as Program Director for the Beinecke Scholarship Takes over as the fourth director in the program's history

By Brian Laubscher
July 28, 2022

Matthew Loar ’07, director of fellowships at Washington and Lee University, was recently named program director for the Beinecke Scholarship. Loar is the fourth director in the program’s history. He will hold this new role while continuing his current responsibilities at W&L.

As director, Loar is responsible for the management and administration of the program, which was established in 1971 by The Sperry and Hutchinson Company’s board of directors to provide scholarships for the graduate education of young men and women of exceptional promise.

The program seeks to encourage and enable highly motivated students to pursue opportunities available to them and to be courageous in the selection of a graduate course of study in the arts, humanities and social sciences.

Since 1975, the Beinecke Scholarship has selected 696 college juniors from more than 110 different undergraduate institutions. Each scholar receives $4,000 prior to entering graduate school and an additional $30,000 while attending graduate school.

Loar himself was a Beinecke Scholar, having received the award in 2006. After graduating Washington and Lee with a Bachelor of Arts in classics, he went on to earn a Master of Studies from Kellogg College, University of Oxford as well as a Ph.D. in classics from Stanford University.

“I was drawn to the work of fellowship advising by a desire to pay it forward — to provide future Washington and Lee students with the same support and guidance that I had received from faculty and staff members throughout my own academic and professional journey,” Loar said.  “I sought to direct the Beinecke Scholarship Program for precisely the same reason: the Beinecke Scholarship and the people connected to it have profoundly shaped me, both as a student and now as a professional in higher education, and I am excited to contribute more directly to the mission of the Beinecke Scholarship Program for decades to come.”

Seven Washington and Lee students have earned the Beinecke Scholarship since Kelly Brotzman ’95 first received the award in 1994. Current W&L student Tanajia Moye-Green ’23 is among the 16 students selected for the 2022 scholarship.

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