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As UCLA maintains its commitment to offering an affordable undergraduate education, endowed giving has a vital role to play. In every area of campus, gifts from donors support promising and ambitious students who are working hard to achieve their dreams. For these students, scholarships and other forms of financial assistance can make all the difference in the world.
Benicio C., a classically trained pianist from California’s San Gabriel Valley, knows firsthand the impact of endowed giving.
With his lifelong passion for music, Benicio dreamed of attending UCLA. He knew that The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music was a place where he could hone his skills, broaden his repertoire and work with world-class instructors.
However, while everything about UCLA appealed to Benicio, he wanted to make sure his dreams would not come at too high a cost for his family.
Perfect timing
An affordable education became possible for Benicio thanks to an endowed scholarship. The Sybert Family Alumni Scholarship, established by Richard P. Sybert, M.B.A. ’89, made it so that he could accept UCLA’s offer without financial worries getting in the way.
Now, Benicio is flourishing as a Bruin and a musician. He devotes his time to studying, practicing, collaborating with peers and acquiring new technical skills in fields such as audio engineering.
“The recording studios at the school of music are very impressive — beyond the industry standard,” he says. “In addition to playing my own music, I’m learning a lot about being a recording engineer. I love capturing the music of my classmates, helping them make the best-sounding version of their work.”
A long-awaited resolution
The Sybert Scholarship also enabled Benicio to take care of some unfinished business. When he took to the stage in June 2022 and sat down at a piano — a 43-piece orchestra behind him and an audience of friends and family in front of him — he was finally fulfilling an intention he set when he was in high school.
“My senior-year performance was supposed to be Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in G Minor. Sadly, the pandemic meant I ended up performing it over Zoom,” he recalls. “When I got to UCLA, my professors encouraged me to perform the piece the way I had dreamed of doing — in a concert hall with a full orchestra. And I did! With my childhood music instructor and lifelong musical mentor Dr. Benjamin Salisbury conducting! That was a huge moment for me. I will never hear that concerto without thinking of UCLA.”
Looking ahead, Benicio has his sights set on a graduate degree in musicology — he hopes to stay at UCLA and research the interplay of the various musical communities of his hometown.
“San Gabriel has a rich musical life, with so many diverse groups of people playing for each other, listening to each other and inspiring each other,” he says. “In that way, it’s a lot like UCLA.”
To learn more about supporting students through endowed giving, contact Brittany Schoof at (310) 612-2085 or bschoof@support.ucla.edu
For information about giving to the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, contact Amanda Court at (920) 901-6046 or acourt@schoolofmusic.ucla.edu
