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Jahanvi Desai Memorial Endowed Scholarship

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Jahanvi Desai smiling at the camera.
Collage of photos of Jahanvi Desai.
Jahanvi Desai standing between two other individuals and smiling.

About the Jahanvi Desai Memorial Endowed Scholarship

The Jahanvi Desai Memorial Scholarship aims to honor the creative, independent spirit and love of learning that Jahanvi Desai (’03) embraced as a UMD undergraduate student and beyond in her career and life.

Jahanvi was a renaissance woman whose curiosity knew no bounds. She created her own unique course of study with degrees in chemistry and art history. She sought out an apprenticeship at the Smithsonian and Quarto Conservation where she fell in love with book and paper conservation, a niche space requiring expertise in science and art. Her hard work and expertise resulted in owning her own conservation business focused on paper and preserving others’ legacies – books, family heirloom documents and historical records.

Outside the classroom, she could fix a car; she was a master at word games, a skilled sous chef (and an even better baker), and a terrific dancer. She had as many friends as she had interests. She was committed to conservation and recycling before it was cool to be an environmentalist. She was fiendishly smart and very, very funny. If you needed help or wanted to know something, you asked Jahanvi. Her relationships crossed generations and cultures. She was a free spirit and unapologetically herself. She led an independent, deeply satisfying life that was much, much too short. Her last act was one typical of her generosity, she asked that her legacy be to support the education for deserving students.

In honor of their friend, sister and lifelong inspiration, the friends and family of Jahanvi Desai endowed this scholarship through the University of Maryland College Park Foundation to support curious, driven STEAM students. They hope the recipients' educations bring them joy in art and music, wonder in biology and chemistry and opens endless avenues to a fulfilling future.

About the Fund

The Jahanvi Desai Memorial Endowed Scholarship provides merit-based scholarships for undergraduate students through the Division of Student Affairs. Eligible recipients will:

  • Be identified as experiencing food insecurity, housing insecurity, financial instability or any other unmet essential need as determined by the Dean of Students Office 
  • Preference will be given to students enrolled (major, dual major and/or minor) in a STEAM degree program (science, technology, engineering, the arts and mathematics) in the A. James Clark School of Engineering, College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences and/or the College of Arts and Humanities
  • Additional preference will be given to students studying chemistry or art history

How to Apply

For more information on how to apply to the Jahanvi Desai Memorial Endowed Scholarship, please contact us at sagiving@umd.edu or 301-314-4900.

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