Professor Robert M. Leekley Memorial Giving Circle Scholarship
Scholarship Recipients
2023-24: Nick Pratscher '24, Avelino Marban-Ramirez '25, Zeke Cross '25, Jade Kaminska '25,
Clay Goff '24, Michael Passarelli '24, Louis Perona '24
2022-23: Dino Biggers '24, J.D. Barrett '23, Nick Pratscher '24, Ryan Payne '23
2021-22: John Barrett '23, Jared Schneider '22, Sydney MacDonald '22, Ryan Payne '23, Jackson
Fischer '23, Dorian Lesiuk '23, Katherine Petty '23, Klaudia Wyszynski '23
This Giving Circle scholarship honors the contributions of Professor Leekley during his 44-year career at Illinois Wesleyan University. The scholarship will be awarded annually to an outstanding junior or senior economics major.
Professor Leekley’s passion was always teaching both inside and outside of the classroom. He loved mentoring student research, supervising 30 honors projects, and devoted a remarkable amount of time teaching and working with students one-on-one in his office to help them master economics, statistics, and econometrics.
Not satisfied with existing statistics textbooks, he published his own. In addition to his invaluable time commitment, he bequeathed over $3 million to IWU to endow student scholarships. And thus his legacy will continue through many more generations of students.
For these reasons and many more, the economics faculty believe that this scholarship is a fitting way for Professor Leekley’s colleagues, friends, and students to honor his contributions to Illinois Wesleyan University.
Goal: Fund as many annual $2,500 scholarships as possible.
The progress thermometer represents totals as of October 2, 2024.