(Black PR Wire) -- AUSTIN, Texas - Long-term partners Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU) and American Campus Communities (ACC: NYSE) celebrate their 25-year partnership with the establishment of two academic scholarship programs and a new endowment. 

The investment will support and highlight the academic nature of ACC’s mission. Over the next five years, ACC will support PVAMU students with a total contribution of $225,000 to be distributed as follows:

• An annual $15,000 American Campus Communities “Next Step” Scholarship supporting students with great financial need
  
  

• Two annual $5,000 “Success by Design” scholarships, awarded to two students majoring in mission-related fields, such as architecture and design; An added goal is to encourage equity and diversity in career paths that can directly impact the student housing sector.
  
  

• An annual $20,000 investment in the American Campus Communities Endowed Scholarship Fund to aid the general support needs of full-time undergraduate students 

“The endowment, as well as awarding scholarships to students who will represent the next generation of diverse thinkers, is such a meaningful way to acknowledge and commemorate our longstanding partnership with ACC,” said Prairie View A&M University president, Ruth J. Simmons. “We appreciate ACC’s unwavering commitment to PVAMU.”

All of the initial scholarships were recently awarded to PVAMU students for the 2021-22 school year. The “Next Step” scholarship was awarded to a total of fifteen students in $1,000 increments. The inaugural “Success by Design” scholarships were granted to PVAMU upperclassmen, Shantel Hood and William A. Spriggins, V (both pictured above). Both are juniors in the School of Architecture.

“I’m extremely humbled and honored to receive this scholarship; the timing of the blessing was perfect. I plan on using my funds towards my tuition balance and a self-built desktop to perform software AutoCAD, Revit and Photoshop to name a few. I would like to say thank you to ACC for the scholarship opportunity and PVAMU for making my transfer experience great,” shared Spriggins.

In 1996, PVAMU and ACC began a shared mission to create an academically-focused living and learning environment. Since then, the partnership has delivered more than $137 million in student communities and nine phases of modern academically-oriented housing, serving nearly 5,000 students with on-campus housing accommodations.

“We will forever be grateful to PVAMU as our first university client for believing in us since our founding days -- this is our way of saying thank you while helping to invest in future leaders,” said Bill Bayless, chief executive officer at ACC.