Russell Pearlman had a big surprise in hand for his parents when he took them out to dinner for their 40th wedding anniversary. Through a gift to IU Journalism, he created the Fran and Donn Pearlman Scholarship to honor his parents.
“I put a letter from Dean Hamm announcing the scholarship in a diploma cover,” Pearlman recounted. “After dinner I gave them the diploma cover and my mom was like ‘Why are you giving us your college diploma?’ Then they read the letter. They were thrilled.”
“Education has always been so important to my folks,” said Pearlman, BAJ’95, MBA’00. “They always told me that I can study anything, but that whatever it is that I needed to study hard. So starting a scholarship at Indiana in their name was a no-brainer. I liked the idea of helping students go abroad and broaden their horizons, so the new journalism international programs seemed like an ideal fit.”
Pearlman’s parents flew in from Las Vegas and Russell flew in from New York to meet the first winner at the school’s spring scholarship ceremony. The scholarship is awarded to a student who is an Ernie Pyle Scholar with a minimum GPA of 3.2 and an interest in study abroad programs.
“Attending the ceremonies in April to personally meet the first recipient, Sarah Hutchins, as well as other scholarship winners and faculty members certainly reinforced our already strong opinion about the excellence of the IU School of Journalism,” Donn Pearlman said. “It also brought back happy memories of previous visits to the campus.
The younger Pearlman is editorial director at Korn Ferry. He was previously editorial director at Imprint, vice president and editor-in-chief of OppenheimerFunds and senior markets editor at SmartMoney Magazine. While at SmartMoney, he was a frequent commentator on CNBC, CNN, Fox and MSNBC.
Russell Pearlman
