Southern Illinois University in Carbondale has announced a gift of $1 million from Marsha and Gary Bertrand to endow a scholarship fund.

The gift will establish the Bertrand Foundation Scholarship Endowment, which will provide tuition support to students from middle-income families. A similar endowment will be established at the University of South Carolina, where Gary Bertrand earned a degree in accounting while stationed in the Air Force.

High school sweethearts, the Bertrands grew up in an Illinois farming community of approximately fourteen hundred people. Marsha Bertrand, who graduated from SIU in 1970 with an associate degree in business and later earned an M.B.A. at Lake Forest School of Management, is a freelance writer and author of four books on finance and investing. After leaving the Air Force, Gary Bertrand worked in banking for ten years and purchased a Chicago-based company that specialized in glued magazine inserts for publications. He sold the company in 1994.

"Our scholarships are earmarked for middle-income families, which is the environment we grew up in," said Gary Bertrand. "Several scholarship programs are in place to support low-income families. And those with high income don’t require such support. Marsha and I have been fortunate to enjoy success through our careers and various investments. We don't have any children, so we decided it was best to provide scholarship support for our schools."