Scholarship Snapshot
Boise State Awards $14.3 Million in Scholarships
Scholarships are the Gateway
Scholarships are the gateway to a college education for many students. Last year the university awarded $14.3 million in both need and merit-based scholarships to over 8,000 students. Philanthropy alone helped more than 3,100 of those students with the resources to pay for tuition fees, books, and even food, allowing those students to focus on their studies and futures.
The effects of scholarship support ripple beyond student aid: It advances Idaho and the economy. Scholarship support allows our students to see Idaho’s and the world’s problems and say “I will create something better.” Then, as our scholarship recipients transition to alumni, they will continue to leave an indelible mark on society because they understand the power of giving and engagement having learned it first-hand.
Who Received Donor-Funded Scholarships?
27 percent of first-year students received a donor-funded scholarship.
2023 Boise State University Scholarship Awards
Meet Scholarship Recipient Niya Nyapamba ’22
Video contains closed captions and a transcript is provided on this page.
About Niya Nyapamba
Niya Nyapamba ’22 didn’t start to open up about surviving the Gatumba Massacre until she was a student at Boise’s East Junior High School, when she began taking theater classes.
“That’s when I started being more open to whoever interacted with me. My theater arts class helped me be more vocal,” Niya said. “I feel like theater helped me cope with my past.”
On Aug. 13, 2004, most of Niya’s immediate family survived a massacre at a refugee camp near the Gatumba Village in Burundi and immigrated to the United States as refugees. As a result, she hardly spoke until she started playing basketball and taking theater classes at East Junior High.
As she approached college Niya knew she’d have to pay for college herself and realized that “the only way I was going to…was through scholarships.” Her determination paid off when Nyapamba received two awards: the Britt Bowden Memorial Scholarship for the Performing Arts and the Dan Allen Peterson Memorial Scholarship in Theatre Arts and Film.
Nyapamba graduated with a BA in Theatre Arts with a minor in international business. She wrote The Act of Overcoming, a play about dealing with trauma, and in December of 2022, she delivered the university’s student commencement address. Next Fall, she will pursue her MBA at the University of Colorado in Denver.
Video Transcript
[Title text] Scholarship support provides opportunities for many Boise State Students. Thank you for your generosity!
[Niya Nyasha ’22, Theater Arts, BA] Life in Burundi is pretty much like you wake up you try to find food and by the thankfully like the U.N will provide that food for you. So and then we got picked to come to America, so our case got approved. It took a while for me to kind of open up to my peers and kind of — you know, I’m — I was a survivor of a massacre.
Coming in the US not knowing the language, my theater arts class actually helped me kind of me be more vocal. The first monologue that I did was, it was called My Grandmother Thinks I’m Beautiful, and some of the words in that monologue resonated with me, and it just kind of hit home, to the point where I started crying. And to me that’s the first time since the massacre that I actually cried.
And in that moment I just feel like, oh my gosh, like, I felt like I could use theater to kind of, like, be myself and just cry, and just like accept that, yeah th at was painful, and as as long as I — I give myself that pain to just experience it, then I can move forward and I feel like theater can help me with that. I actually wrote a short play for my senior project. It was called The Act of Overcoming, and I just feel like it’s something that I needed to do for myself.
Just like, tell my story and hopefully someone can watch it, or hear it, and just kind of realize that people do overcome things differently. Going back to tell these stories kind of me kind of breaking that barrier that I can’t talk about this, I can’t talk about what happened to me, and I’m gonna be honest, like I did not get any form of support, money from like parents, or family. Nothing. I had to work my way throughout college, and figure out ways to that I could graduate without being in debt.
The only way that I was able to pay for my college through these four and a half years, was through scholarships. The Pell Grant and all the scholarships that I applied for — that’s how I made it through college. So I’m gonna start my MBA this August.
I want to be a financial analyst, and I felt like these four years was kind of more like theater, and I did have a minor international business, so this is kind of me trying to kind of deep dive into that business aspect that I actually also like. Even if I got into the business route, I I feel like theater is part of me. Theater is definitely something that I’ll keep doing on the side for sure.
[Music]