University of Kansas Student Receives Insurance Settlement Scholarship

Kansas Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger has awarded a $1,000 scholarship to a University of Kansas minority student as part of a program established by an insurance company’s discrimination suit settlement. Danyel L. Bell, a senior accounting major at the KU School of Business, will receive the scholarship money for the spring 2011 semester.

The scholarship is funded by a Monumental Life Insurance Co. settlement originated in 2005 in Kansas.

Bell is the daughter of Douglas and Mildred Bell of Lawrence, Kansas.

Insurance regulator examinations of the company revealed that African Americans were charged higher premiums because of their race. Monumental agreed to a $5 million nationwide financial settlement. Commissioner Praeger advocated for establishing a scholarship program for Kansas African American college students with the state’s share of the settlement. The Kansas

Legislature passed a law designating the funds for the program.

Those applying for the scholarship must have these requirements:

• The applicant must be an African-American student.
• The applicant must have acquired the necessary credit hours to be enrolled as a junior or higher level at a Kansas accredited institution of higher learning.
• The applicant’s major must be in mathematics, computer science or business, with emphasis in accounting, economics, finance or investments.
• The applicant must have a cumulative grade point average of 3.0 or better.
• The applicant must be available to be interviewed.

Interested and eligible students should contact their office of minority affairs at their colleges for more information, or they can download the information and application at www.ksinsurance.org/gpa/scholarship.htm. The application deadline occurs twice each year: on May 1 and October 1.

Topics Education Kansas Universities