Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.
-- John F. Kennedy
From his inauguration in 1960 to his untimely death in 1963, President John F. Kennedy inspired his country to make this a better world by serving others. In the year succeeding the President's death, educators in the Bay Area were granted permission to use the late president's name to start a university on one condition: it should be something he would be proud of.
From its founding, John F. Kennedy University embraced working adults. We have given thousands of adult students the opportunity to complete their bachelor's degrees, or to further their careers through graduate and professional study. Our five schools—Education and Liberal Arts; Holistic Studies; Law; Management; and Graduate Psychology—have had a significant regional impact and growing national recognition.
Some forty years later, John F. Kennedy University has extended its reach and its touch with an ambitious plan to make permanent the good work that it provides the community. Concrete examples of how
Your Dollars at Work have enhanced the University's commitment to make its communities better places include:
- Over 75,000 hours of low cost counseling services are provided each year to the communities of Oakland, Pleasant Hill, and Sunnyvale to those who can least afford them. This network of JFKU Counseling Centers is an essential part of Bay Area mental health services.
- Our Elder Law Clinic provides low-income elders in Alameda, Contra Costa, and Solano counties with free legal help in combating elder financial abuse, including legal services and public education events. The Clinic operates at the University's main campus in Pleasant Hill. The Clinic currently provides nearly 2,500 hours of direct service to elders each year.
- The University's unique Urban Teacher's Program purposes to improve primary and secondary education by enabling talented adults, especially members of underrepresented groups, to change professions, return to college, and prepare for new careers in urban classrooms.
- Our current student population continues to grow in diversity and in the number of working adults who qualify for some form of financial assistance, making scholarship support vital to their continued success.
In broad terms, we seek to secure the financial strength and vitality of the University by lessening our dependence on tuition as a revenue source. To those ends, the University encourages regular giving programs to enhance its operating budget, and looks to donors for specific instructions about how to allocate their philanthropic gifts.
