Scholarship honors ECU alumnus

GREENVILLE, NC —   A recent $210,000 donation to the East Carolina University Foundation, Inc. will establish a scholarship for foreign students to attend ECU.
Rachael Newell of Burlington, N.C. donated the sum from the estate of her son, Richard Lee Newell, who died in 2004 after being diagnosed with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia.

The Richard L. Newell International Scholarship is designed for a foreign student from Southeast Asia. Scholarship recipients must plan to use their education to benefit their native country.

Richard Lee Newell graduated from ECU in 1982 with a degree in computer science. In the spring of 2000 he was diagnosed with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia and began to set aside funds for family and philanthropy. In addition to the scholarship endowment to ECU, he donated equipment to the School for the Blind in Thailand and donated art to the North Carolina Library System. The Newell family also donated Chinese artifacts from Newell’s collection to the ECU Department of Anthropology.