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Advancing Education While Building Character

Since 1999, the Gates Millennium Scholars (GMS) Program has promoted academic excellence and changed the lives of more than 15,000 talented students by awarding almost $614 million in scholarships to help them earn undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degrees.

GMS annually selects 1,000 African American, American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian Pacific Islander American and Hispanic American students who demonstrate high academic ability, leadership potential and significant financial need. We offer each of them the personal, academic and financial support that allows these students to attend the college or university of their choice and reach their full potential.

But the impact of the GMS Program extends beyond academic achievement: Gates Scholars and Alumni also make positive contributions to their communities or to philanthropic causes that benefit society.

Discovering Potential, Inspiring Achievement

For highly capable students who have the propensity for leadership and service, GMS offers opportunities and resources that would not otherwise have been available to them.

Eligible students nationwide are welcome to apply for the GMS Program. In 2011, 98 percent of Scholars completed their applications online. For initial scholar selection, applications are assessed for student achievements in academics, leadership potential and service to the community. We include community service in our criteria because we’ve found that young adults who volunteer for service often continue their commitment and contributions to society long after they leave college.

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Design in Progress: What Happens Behind the Scenes

Years ago, M.H. Alderson confirmed it: If at first you don’t succeed, you’re running about average. That observation especially rings true in the design world, where seldom does one create the perfect piece with a single, swift pencil sketch.

Part of the enjoyment and the magic of graphic art is the process of piecing together the puzzle: What if I put this line there? That color here? Use this type style in the foreground and set it at an angle on the page?

Like amateur chemists, we experiment with light and perception, imagination and attitude. Our attempts illuminate, ignite, sometimes smolder—but they all become part of the invisible strand connecting origin to the final product. Upon our cast-offs, excellence is solidly built.

Award-winning works undergo many solutions on the road to recognition. Even the best graphic designer spends much time envisioning approaches for a project, then carefully giving form to his or her visions through sketches and compositions—only to have all the ideas later rejected.

Design in Progress: What Happens Behind the Scenes is a celebration of design creation. The 53 projects it includes represent both the finished piece and those stages that preceded it.

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Congressional Country Club: Celebrating 75 Years

A National Institution

It was an inspired vision that led to the founding of Congressional Country Club, creating a national institution that has endured for three-quarters of a century.  The Club’s rich and diverse heritage encompasses multiple generations of families, U.S. Presidents, world war, an economic depression, the OSS occupation, changing American lifestyles—and global recognition for showcasing some of the most notable golf tournaments in history.

Today, Congressional occupies a central place in our country’s past, in golf lore, and in the social life of the nation’s capital. The Club’s ambitious founding framework is at the heart of this tradition, when a pair of enterprising individuals sought to conceive “a new National Institution… an organization formed for a distinctive purpose and of distinctive membership… a club national and international in its scope and recognition.”

Congressional was born on remote farmland that, whenever it rained, became a quagmire so muddy, construction had to be temporarily halted. In 1924, in an elegant and widely publicized celebration befitting a Club named “Congressional,” the fledgling organization opened its gates for the first time. Its outstanding golf course and $1 million clubhouse—complete with a rare indoor pool and two-story gymnasium—made national headlines. It was the age of jazz and prohibition, and members immersed themselves in the good life.

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Legends of the Silent Screen

Buster Keaton

Joseph Francis “Buster” Keaton was born in 1895 to medicine show performers in Piqua, Kansas, a town literally blown off the map by a cyclone a few years later.

In his autobiography, Buster Keaton stated, “I have considered myself a fabulously lucky man.” Indeed, his good fortune was evident at six months, when a fall down a flight of stairs left him unhurt and nicknamed “Buster”—a vaudeville term for a comic fall—by family friend Harry Houdini.  Buster’s resiliency was showcased in the family comedy act, The Three Keatons, where he starred as the “Human Mop.” The act broke up in 1917, the year he met Fatty Arbuckle at a Broadway theater. After accepting an offer to appear in comedy shorts, Keaton’s film career was under way.

By the 1920s, Keaton and Chaplin were the kings of comedy. Keaton married Natalie Talmadge in 1921 and released “The Playhouse,” a surrealistic short with elaborate special effects.  In 1923, Keaton switched to feature-length comedies with a parody of D.W. Griffith’s “Intolerance,” called “The Three Ages.” In “Sherlock, Jr.” (1924), Keaton’s biggest commercial success, a projectionist fantasizes about stepping through the screen into the movie set. “The General,” another favorite, was based on the true Civil War saga of a spy who tried to steal a locomotive called the General. Seven of the film’s eight reels were devoted to the chase.

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Spirit of Service

Making an Impact for the Greater Good

Booz Allen’s association with charitable organizations frequently comes from a place very close to home. Ten years ago, when Senior Associate Craig Miller was diagnosed with the neurodegenerative disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)―better known as Lou Gehrig’s disease―Booz Allen engaged in critical ALS Association fundraising efforts.

This year, the ALS Association awarded Booz Allen its inaugural Partnership for Success Award for the firm’s ongoing financial backing and its groundbreaking pro bono work with the association’s signature fundraising event, the Walk to Defeat ALS. With Booz Allen’s help, the walk has become an annual $18 million enterprise involving 150,000 people in 150 cities.

“For us, this is personal, and a way to honor Craig, who passed away in late 2007. Craig’s Crusaders has been our team since the first walk,” says Executive Vice President Ken Wiegand. “ALS is one of the toughest health problems out there. But we will stay the course until there’s a cure.”

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Gun Purchase Isn’t a Shot in the Dark

Experts stress training, weighing decision carefully

You’ve see the pattern repeated time and again: An act of violence such as the Starbucks slayings occurs close to home, and suddenly many residents are talking about buying firearms to protect themselves.

But gun experts and police officers warn would-be gun owners from making a hasty decision in the throes of fear and insecurity: Bringing home a gun is a serious undertaking.

“Using a gun for self-defense is not for everyone,” says Ernie Lyles, co-owner of Gilbert’s Small Arms Range in Lorton, which has taught handgun safety classes for 13 years. “First-time buyers must weigh the repercussions of using deadly force.”

“You must train sufficiently to be comfortable using the gun before you bring it home,” says Capt. Pat Sullins of the Spotsylvania County Sheriff’s Office.

They suggest that potential gun owners confront two key issues:

• Would fear or anger impair your ability to assess a situation? If you answer yes, you should consider another form of self-defense.

• Could you kill someone and live with the consequences? Many new buyers believe they will be able to merely wound an attacker by aiming at an arm or leg instead of the trunk. But not aiming at the widest part of the body increases the likelihood of missing the target.

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Range Owners: Take Aim at Business Plan First

On an average day, customers at a local shooting range included a software engineer, journalist, retiree, cable TV technician—and a congressman. Nationwide, men and women from all backgrounds are demonstrating an increased interest in shooting sports and firearm safety.

With area growth restricting options for safe outdoor ranges, indoor firing ranges fulfill an important role, says Gilbert Small Arms Range co-owner Ernie Lyles.

“The only safe, convenient place for an urban population to practice is at an indoor range,” he said.

Shooting range design experts say the potential range owner’s first consideration should not be the floor plan, but the business plan.

“You need to clarify your goals, identify your source of funding, and determine a marketing strategy,” said retired Marine Col. Dave Willis, range service manager of the National Rifle Association’s range development program, a six-year-old comprehensive seminar on building and managing shooting ranges.

“A range is like any other business,” Willis said. “So we suggest that you seek professional assistance—a marketing consultant, engineer, architect, attorney. We advise installing a pro shop to increase income, with ammunition that’s compatible with the range.”

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Restarting and Sustaining Growth and Development in Africa

Over the past two decades, Africa has been burdened by sluggish, often negative economic growth, resulting in reduced welfare for most of the population. Although growth rates have recently improved, the variety of structural adjustment programs that have been put in place still have not yielded politically acceptable rates of growth or development.

EAGER’s Public Strategies for Promoting Growth and Equity component (EAGER/PSGE) has launched a comprehensive research effort on “Restarting and Sustaining Growth and Development in Africa.” A group of EAGER/PSGE consortium members and collaborating African research institutions will be implementing the research, with the Institute for International Development taking the lead.

The initiative is designed to highlight the key obstacles to accelerated growth and to suggest policy departures for achieving broad-based development.

The study is predicated on the existence of linkages between growth (sustained increases in real output per capita) and development (general improvements in welfare).

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The Price of Going Green

Clients and designers are increasingly buying into the green philosophy. But at what cost?

Landfills overflowing with mountains of trash, streams bubbling with toxins, barren hillsides the result of clear cutting: One look and it’s easy to get caught up in the environmental tide to spec recycled paper, eliminate petroleum and heavy metals in inks, and reduce harmful chemicals in the pressroom.

Once you get past the emotional aspects, though, the choice to go green is fundamentally a business decision. And with a few regional exceptions, recycled paper, soy inks, and safer printing methods cost more than their conventional counterparts. Industry watchers expect this will change—but only in the long run.

Paper Dollars

While “environmentally friendly” once was synonymous with “pocket hostile,” that’s not always the case anymore, especially for paper.

Industry experts say there’s no such thing as a standard price difference between recycled and comparable virgin stock because price is influenced by many factors: A mill’s location and capability to make recycled stock, the paper’s finish, postconsumer content, etc. Price is affected more by quality than by pre- or postconsumer content.

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Improving on Success

Discovery Channel’s in-house agency uses humor to make a long-running campaign splashier than ever.

Shark Week—a collection of documentaries about the world’s most feared fins—is a nine-year success story that consistently reels in double the average prime-time audience for its network, Discovery Channel. With Shark Week’s broad appeal and stunning photography, creating promotional materials might sound like an easy assignment. In reality, it gets more difficult each year for the Discovery Design Group, the network’s in-house agency, to better the previous campaign. The DDG designers face a complex challenge: How can they refresh the appeal of a long-running campaign and assure viewers they won’t be watching the same old thing?

That isn’t the only challenge. Shark Week is broadcast in the summer, when television viewership routinely decreases as audiences migrate outdoors. And Shark Week this year follows the Olympics; many viewers had switched to NBC to watch the summer Games, and DDG needed to attract them back to the Discovery Channel before they explored other options.

To make the task even more difficult, DDG needed to avoid disturbing imagery in the promotion. Discovery Channel is careful to safeguard its reputation as a network that presents quality, intelligent programming for all ages—a tranquil addition to any cable system.