The National Technical Institute for the Deaf at the Rochester Institute of Technology has announced a $600,000 gift from the Johnson Scholarship Foundation in West Palm Beach, Florida.

The gift, which will be matched by a federal grant, will support scholarships for twelve deaf and hard-of-hearing RIT students each year. To encourage donations from the community, the Johnson Scholarship Foundation is offering to match up to an additional $100,000 received from other sources. The first scholarships are expected to be awarded in 2008.

"The Johnson Scholarship Foundation believes that education empowers people to be more independent and to more fully participate in the economic and social benefits of our society," said foundation president Malcolm MacLeod. "One of the foundation's core areas of interest is deaf and hard-of-hearing students. Our creation of an endowed scholarship for innovation and entrepreneurship...at RIT/NTID was a natural outgrowth of these ideas. We have every confidence that this will help generations of deaf and hard-of-hearing students to become successful entrepreneurs."