Scottish Rite Foundation eases burden for ASU grad students

Since 2017, the Phoenix Scottish Rite Foundation has donated more than $160,000 to programs and over $90,000 in scholarships to Arizona State University.

“The Scottish Rite has been so generous in their student support over the past eight years. Many of the students wouldn't be able to select sites that require a greater time commitment if they didn't have the additional funding from the Scottish Rite,” said College of Health Solutions Clinical Professor Kelly Ingram.

This past summer, at the 2025 Speech and Hearing Science Awards, the Scottish Rite Foundation awarded five students the Scottish Rite Foundation Stipend with the objective of relieving the financial burden associated with a master’s education. The stipend assists second-year graduate students interested in pediatric language and literacy as they pursue unpaid internships, offering $3,000 per student. Since 2018, 29 students have been supported by this stipend.

“There’s an old saying. If you want to go fast, go it alone. If you want to go far, go as a team. You’re our team. We could not have done this on our own. We are not speech-language pathologists, but we are an old organization. We’ve been around since the 1700s. The reason we have persisted is because we’ve gone as a team,” said Curtis White, the former president of the Scottish Rite Phoenix Valley, at the ceremony.

The Scottish Rite is the most widely practiced Masonic Rite in the world, starting in France in 1750. The Foundation is segmented into valleys, similar to other organizations’ chapters. Each valley is devoted to supporting initiatives related to a different part of the body. The Phoenix Valley Scottish Rite Foundation, which was started in the 1980s, is dedicated to supporting speech and hearing science.

White and Tony Darin, the former vice president, were responsible for the reinvigoration of the foundation. The two have since retired, becoming emeritus members of the Scottish Rite and continuing to sit on the board in an advisory capacity.

The foundation has gone on to provide assistance for evaluation and treatment services in the ASU Speech and Hearing Clinic and support participants in the Summer Program to Elementary Language and Literacy, the Camp for the Enrichment of Oral Language and Literacy Acquisition, and the Adult Aphasia Book Club, as well as the Scottish Rite Foundation Stipend. As the organization continues to grow, so does its ability to donate to causes across Arizona.

For those interested in contributing, White suggests choosing to support a single program that piques your interests.

“One of the reasons why we're successful, I think, in a way is that we don't overstretch ourselves. We don't take on a whole bunch of stuff and do a mediocre job doing it. It's better to do one thing well than 10 things poorly,” said White.

The work, according to Darin and White, is rewarding on account of the impact it makes on the broader community. A smiling child, a grateful student, a sense of understanding in a client — all indicators of a job well done.

“It's paying it forward for the things that we should be doing in society to help those folks that help others,” said Darin.

Those interested in supporting Speech and Hearing students can provide donations via the ASU Foundation.