For many students, budgeting for college isn’t just a good habit to develop on the path to adulthood. It’s an incredibly careful balancing act to make sure that the funds of each month can stretch to cover housing, food, phone bills, and gas. If an emergency comes up, there might not be anything left to address it, particularly for minority students who are less likely to have a financial safety net from family. That’s why six alumni — André Davis ’89, Tony Tolliver ’88, Jerry Gamble ’88, Dexter Hoskins ’88, Steve McAlester ’88 and Jerall Moreland ’89 — created the NexTus Scholarship Fund.
The name is a portmanteau, blending next, us, and nexus. “So think about what a nexus means. It means connection, it means relationship, it means joining,” Tolliver said. “And ‘us’ is in the middle of that. That means us as Black men, as Black students, as Doane alumni. We wanted to do something for people who look like us who had an experience like us that they weren’t anticipating.”
For Tolliver, it was a broken tooth. The dental costs were high enough that, on his own, he would have to drop out of Doane to have it fixed. Instead, Marty Fye ’83, then an Admissions Counselor and currently Vice President for Advancement, located some funds through the college to cover Tolliver’s dental work.
When Davis’s car broke down, Crete residents gave him a tow into town, or said “pay when you can” for repairs. Coaches came together to ensure that Gamble could return home to South Carolina for “recruiting,” but really so he could be with family as his mother passed away.
For these six men, and countless other alumni, there have been many instances where the college and surrounding communities stepped up to support students. A formal fund had never before been established, they learned from Fye, who has remained friends with them over the last 30-plus years.
That changed in 2020 with the NexTus Scholarship Fund was established by Davis, Tolliver, Gamble, Hoskins, McAlester and Moreland.
Initially set up as an annual donated scholarship fund, the scholarship is now fully endowed thanks to the original group, as well as other alumni who joined their effort to help students.
Most of the six were first-generation college students, and most held multiple jobs throughout their time on campus. If something came up beyond the $20 or so they had to get through each month — that was it. Those challenges still present themselves to students today, particularly students of color and first-generation students. There are no college funds, and there are no generational resources to pull from, either. “If your family wasn’t able to assist you, I mean, what do you do? That can be very stressful,” Hoskins said. “It’s gratifying to us to be able to help out in that perspective.”
