
Charles E. Merrill Jr.
Charles E. Merrill Jr. was a visionary philanthropist and longtime advocate for educational equity whose legacy with IES Abroad began in the late 1950s, when, as a board member at Morehouse College, he personally funded all-expenses-paid scholarships for academically exceptional students from Morehouse and Spelman Colleges to study abroad for a full academic year. These Merrill Scholars, many of whom went on to earn graduate and postgraduate degrees, have made profound contributions in fields ranging from education and medicine to law and public service. In 2011, IES Abroad began efforts to establish the Charles E. Merrill Jr. Endowed Scholarship Fund in his honor, an initiative later championed by alumnus Dr. John Hodges (Nantes 1966–67), who was inspired by a class reunion to make a significant gift and rally support among fellow HBCU alumni. Simultaneously, Gretchen Cook-Anderson, IES Abroad’s Assistant Vice President of Diversity Recruiting & Advising and a former Merrill Scholar herself, mobilized younger Morehouse and Spelman alumni to contribute. Together, their efforts carry forward Merrill’s vision: to ensure that students of color—regardless of financial means—can experience the life-changing power of study abroad, connect with people and cultures vastly different from their own, and discover a world that not only welcomes them, but celebrates their potential to shape it.
“From my early childhood I [traveled throughout] Europe... London, Paris, Florence, Rome, Switzerland. Then in my teens, this widened to include Germany and Austria, and even Czechoslovakia and a couple of places in Yugoslavia. [I began thinking that] if a trip to Prague, a city no Merrill had ever visited, could help build my independence, it could do the same for Black students and their schools. I developed a strong commitment to Spelman and Morehouse Colleges, [among other] colleges and secondary schools.”Charles E. Merrill Jr.