Sophie Gardner never thought she would be asked, “Want to go to Kenya?”
The, at the time, first-year Michigan State University student had never traveled outside of North America, and her only international travel was a short trip to Canada.
The opportunity came through the Gupta Values Scholarship, established by MSU alumnus Shashikant (Shashi) Gupta and his wife, Margaret. It provides $20,000 over four years along with leadership experiences, retreats in Washington, D.C., and service experience opportunities that send students far beyond campus. For Gardner, that meant traveling across the world.
The scholarship is available to MSU, University of Michigan, and Northern Virginia Community College students and centers on three core values: integrity, human dignity and excellence. Students who are recognized embody those values not only in their academics, but in their personal lives, work, and in the community.
Gupta Scholars are offered a summer volunteer experience at one of the dozens of organizations supported by the Gupta Family Foundation, including Kenya Connect—an organization that engages and empowers students and teachers in rural Kenya—and Starting Right, Now, a Tampa-based non-profit that serves unaccompanied homeless youth.
Gardner and other first-year Gupta Scholars heard presentations from students who had gone to Africa for Kenya Connect. Looking at fellow scholar, Sylvia MacNab, she envisioned not just a service trip, but a journey of a lifetime.
“I wanted to push myself out of my comfort zone, experience a different culture, and apply what I love—working with farmers and rural communities,” Gardner said. “Kenya Connect’s focus on rural education really resonated with me because I come from a rural background.”
Gardner almost didn’t apply for the scholarship at all. Reviewing and applying for a litany of scholarships during her senior year of high school was becoming an overwhelming task. When she received an email inviting her to apply for the Gupta Values Scholarship, she doubted her story fit the scholarship criteria. But her mother insisted she apply before the deadline.
As part of her application, Gardner wrote about Safe Prom, a program she helped create in high school to safely transport students—including those from low-income families and with disabilities—to and from prom for free.
Gardner said the scholarship gave her more than financial support. The program gave her a sense of belonging, a community of other scholars, and a life-changing experience in Kenya, where she worked alongside Kenya Connect staff in literacy and wellness programs, including weekly reading sessions where students gathered for stories, games and learning.
“Leaving them was really hard,” she said. “The community was so loving and welcoming. While we have more material things in the U.S., the sense of joy and community there was incredible, and that will stay with me forever.”
Her experience embodies the scholarship’s core values and demonstrates the global impact possible when philanthropy meets experiential learning.
Values over grades
The classroom had turned into a dance party.
Students clapped, laughed and practiced Swahili greetings with Sylvia MacNab. It was part of an unforgettable African summer with Kenya Connect that would reshape how she sees service, education and human dignity.
For MacNab, an MSU sophomore from Virginia studying human biology, the Gupta Values Scholarship stood out from the dozens of other scholarships she had reviewed for its focus on values over grades, the limited number of awardees every year, and the opportunity to travel across the world and serve.
This opportunity inspired her to commit to working with local students and families on classroom projects ranging from community storytelling to health education, which aligns closely with her goal of pursuing a career in medicine.
Kenya Connect partners with a local school for disabled children. During MacNab's time in Kenya, the school noted concerns with the number of children suffering from seizures, a common condition among those with autism, and a lack of supplies and training to properly care for the children.
MacNab, who is a student and EMT on the side, used her knowledge to teach and train the staff in first aid and other medical information relevant to the children they were serving. It’s some of the moments working with the disabled children that MacNab remembers the most, like the day of the classroom dance party. The party was the culmination of weeks of work with the children, including a boy who was almost completely non-verbal when MacNab first met him.
“By the end of it, we were having dance parties, and he would give me high fives and come up and say hi to me in Swahili,” she said.
Moments like that stayed with MacNab after she returned to East Lansing. Those experiences match something she found through the Gupta Values Scholarship itself, a small community built on belonging, care and shared values.
MacNab, who comes from rural Appalachia in Virginia, was the first person from her family to come to MSU and didn’t know anyone else who had ventured this far north. But the scholarship kept her from feeling alone.
“It’s really cool to get to know people from all different backgrounds,” she said. “All of them are my friends and it’s really nice to have this core group of students who are high-achieving and hold similar values to me.”
Lessons of life and floss
After spending hours preparing the lesson plan on dental hygiene, an MSU senior stood in front of a class of Kenyan students and realized it wasn’t working.
Aryan Amiri had always taken dental concepts—like brushing, flossing and basic dental care—for granted. After arriving in Kenya and beginning his service with Kenya Connect, he realized those concepts were not universal. He had to quickly adjust his lessons, moving to days spent teaching and practicing flossing and coloring pictures of teeth. The next day would be spent planning a lesson to show parents how to better teach their kids about dental hygiene at home.
“Half of it was trying to adjust to their level, and the other half was trying to push out as much as I could for them to understand it,” Amiri said. “I didn’t know how big the gap was between us.”
Most of his work was entirely educational, from lesson planning and classroom activities to working with parents. Amiri spread his dental knowledge into a funnel, hoping that the children would teach their parents, who would teach their families and communities.
Amiri received a warm reception from the community, which showed him kindness and welcomed him into their homes.
His experience reminded him how much he takes education for granted. During his time with Kenya Connect, Amiri was surrounded by a community that takes their education extremely seriously.
“Service and education are something I’ve been taking for granted,” he said. “Seeing it first-person, experiencing it for a month or two and seeing the entire community working together, it’s definitely been inspiring.”
Amiri hopes to take the inspiration and lessons learned during his time in Kenya into what he hopes will be a future serving as a dentist and serving rural communities like those he served in Kenya.
Like all the scholars, Amiri thanked the Guptas for the life-changing scholarship and opportunities afforded him. While the money awarded with the scholarship certainly helps, the opportunities, access and learning are just as valuable.
“I think this scholarship is one of the most impactful scholarships that I’ve gotten, and it definitely helped me throughout the four years,” he said.
Lessons beyond the ledger
Dignity, integrity, excellence – all are key values not only of the Gupta Values Scholarship, but to Caiden Kippnick’s life, education and future.
Kippnick is a proud Gupta Values scholar and a senior at MSU. Thanks in part to the scholarship support, he will be graduating with his bachelor’s degree in accounting debt free and continuing to the MSU Master’s in Accounting program in hopes of becoming a certified public accountant.
He learned about the Gupta Values Scholarship and was invited to apply shortly after being admitted to MSU. It immediately stood out from the many other scholarships he had considered and applied for.
“They make it a point to find students whose values they share. It’s very important to have dignity and to have integrity in all the work that you do,” he said. “I thought it was a good fit based on a lot of that work that I had done in high school.”
While in high school, he worked with others through county government on creating a blueprint students and school administrators could use for conflict management training, , an initiative he spearheaded.
It translated well into his service with Starting Right, Now, the Tampa-based non-profit, supported by the Gupta family, that helps unaccompanied youth graduate high school on time and continue to a post-secondary goal, like college or the workforce. This enables the youth to catch up with their housed peers and ensure a secure and stable adult life.
Kippnick’s selection for the scholarship gave him a month of service with the organization. He handled responsibilities supporting unaccompanied homeless youth in a variety of ways, including grant writing, programming support, working through inventories, and assembling furniture.
His most impactful work was with an after-school program that helped students cope with trauma, develop emotional intelligence, build strong support systems, and gain skills for college or the workforce.
Kippnick’s role was to use his accounting skills to examine budgets and other supplemental information to create grant applications and reports that would help capture additional funding for the after-school program. This technical work allowed him to gain a true understanding of the hardships the unaccompanied homeless youth face and how each facet of Starting Right, Now contributes to their success.
Seeing how patient and committed the staff was in helping the youth succeed, even during their worst moments, helped teach Kippnick the values of integrity, human dignity and excellence in action.
“These youth need unconditional love and support from everybody in order to get ahead, because a lot of them have never had it before. They don’t always know what it’s like,” he said.
When the Guptas first began offering the scholarship, it was never meant simply to be financial support. They wanted to create an investment in students driven by values and and education that extends beyond the classroom.
“Myriad forces are pulling our youth away from the core values that give meaning to ‘a good life,’" the Guptas said. “Civics and ethics education in our schools and colleges are all but absent. In this context, we felt it important to select students who have demonstrated a commitment to values and encourage them to continue living by these values in their lives and careers after graduation. Being practitioners, we know that values need reinforcement and repetition. So, we actively engage with the scholars — at the fall dinner on campus, and the spring weekend in Virginia, where we discuss broad ethical issues facing humanity and our country, and through the service opportunity component of the scholarship.”
Experiences like these illustrate the core values of the Gupta Values Scholarship – supporting students who not only achieve academic excellence, but who also lead with integrity, dignity and a commitment to service.
These transformative experiences demonstrate the impact of combining philanthropy with immersive, high-impact learning. By providing more tuition assistance, along with service opportunities, the scholarship empowers students to move beyond the classroom, city, state and country and engage in personal, challenging and transformative learning.
These experiences also help students feel more connected with their education and build confidence in their ability to succeed. Philanthropy brings these opportunities to life for students like Gardner, MacNab, Amiri and Kippnick, enriching their learning experience, supporting persistence, and helping them stay on track to graduation.
