Airola-Murveit Family Student Award

Cal grads endow scholarship for students to study abroad

The Airola-Murveit Family Student Award was recently established with a generous gift from Berkeley alumni Leslie Airola-Murveit and Hy Murveit. The award will be made to help UC Berkeley students participate in Berkeley Programs for Study Abroad.

A former study abroad participant herself, Leslie spent a year in Barcelona, Spain in 1975-76. “I learned far more than what was taught in the classroom,” said Leslie, “Hy and I set up this award because we want to promote study abroad to all students, even those with limited financial resources.” Their oldest daughter, Shelley, who is a senior at Georgetown University, followed in her mother’s footsteps by studying in the Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic during her junior year. Their younger daughter, Anna, who is a freshman at Whitman College, also hopes to find an opportunity to study abroad to further her work in environmental science.

Leslie graduated from Berkeley in 1977 with a double major in Spanish and anthropology and went on to earn a law degree from Golden Gate University. Currently she is the president of the board of governors for the Las Lomitas Elementary School District in Menlo Park and is a community mediator. Hy Murveit graduated from Cal in 1983 with a Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science. He now works as a research scientist for Google.

With donations from alumni and friends, Berkeley Programs for Study Aboard recently granted scholarship awards to 120 students for the fall semester and academic year 2009–10. “It is because of committed and enthusiastic alumni like Leslie and Hy that we are able to continue to offer this life changing experience to more students” said Khatharya Um, director of Berkeley Programs for Study Abroad.