The Giordano-Mastroianni Family Endowed Scholarship (SG0009)

Eligibility:

• Be a graduate student with a minimum of 3.5 GPA OR an undergraduate student with a minimum of 3.3 GPA
• Be enrolled full-time
• Be a first generation college student
• Submit a letter of recommendation
• Submit a brief essay

Scholarships are awarded to one graduate student and one undergraduate student.

The Giordano-Mastroianni Family Endowed Scholarship honors the parents of Alberto Giordano and Marta Mastroianni: Maria Bordin and Ferdinando Girodano and Adriana Zanato and Angelo Mastroianni. While Alberto and Marta’s parents could not afford going to college, they taught their children the values of education from a very early age.

The Giordano-Mastroianni Family Endowed Scholarship in Geography honors the parents of Alberto Giordano and Marta Mastroianni: Maria Bordin and Ferdinando Giordano and Adriana Zanato and Angelo Mastroianni. While Alberto and Marta’s parents could not afford going to college, they taught their children the values of education from a very early age, and all they have accomplished in life, they owe to their parents.

Ferdinando was able to complete high school, briefly played professional soccer, and went on to a rewarding career for a number of retail companies. He passed away in 2008. Maria was a stay at home mom who raised four children and kept everybody sane and organized in the first sixteen years of her marriage to Ferdinando, during which the Giordanos lived in nine different cities in Italy. Maria passed away in 2018.

Angelo Mastroianni joined the Air Force at age seventeen and worked as a radio operator until he retired. He and Adriana raised two children. Adriana started working as a seamstress at age 8 and continued in the profession throughout her life. Maria Bordin, Angelo Mastroianni and Adriana Zanato live in Treviso, a northern Italian city near Venice, where a combined four siblings and eight nephews and nieces all live.

Alberto and Marta have established this scholarship to award two first-generation college students, one undergraduate and one graduate, per year. Alberto and Marta declared “We cannot think of a better way to honor our parents. They taught us that honesty, integrity, and empathy are the values we should live by.”