What’s Better Than One Free Degree? TWO. BY NATASHA J. BRAME, KIRSTEN MOSLEY AND DR. JANELLE L. WEST The Bond-Hill Scholarship Is One of Pennsylvania’s Most Powerful Higher Education Opportunities and One of Its Best-Kept Secrets Imagine being the first person in your family to graduate from college. Your family has already celebrated something that may have once felt impossible. Then, a few months later, you get to make another phone call: “I got into graduate school and I don’t have to figure out how to pay for it alone.” At Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, that is not just a hypothetical. For a growing number of students, it is becoming their reality. Students in the Cheyney University Honors Academy may have the opportunity to earn their undergraduate degree tuition-free through qualifying institutional scholarship support. Then, for eligible graduates, the Horace Mann Bond–Leslie Pinckney Hill Scholarship Program, better known as Bond-Hill, can help fund graduate or professional school.
graduates will be pursuing graduate and professional degrees as Bond-Hill Scholars with tuition and fees fully covered. So, what’s better than one free degree? Two. And far more students and families need to know that this opportunity exists. MORE THAN A NAME ON A SCHOLARSHIP Created in 1983, Bond-Hill grew from efforts to expand educational opportunity within Pennsylvania’s public higher education system. The program carries the names of two giants of Black higher education: Horace Mann Bond, former president of Lincoln University, and Dr. Leslie Pinckney Hill, the first president of Cheyney.
A man born only a generation removed from slavery pursued an advanced education and then devoted his life to creating educational opportunities for Black students. More than a century later, students are still walking through doors connected to the work he began. Recently, several Cheyney students experienced that history in a way no textbook could replicate. They sat down with Ms. Gretchen Underwood Tucker, granddaughter of Dr. Leslie Pinckney Hill, and listened as she shared stories about the man behind the name. Students who are benefiting from opportunities connected to Dr.Leslie Pinckney Hill were sitting across from his granddaughter, learning about him not simply as a historical figure or former university president, but as a person. Suddenly, “Bond-Hill” was no longer just the name at the top of a scholarship application.
Hill’s story alone makes the scholarship extraordinary.
Born to formerly enslaved parents, Hill attended Harvard University, earning both bachelor’s and master’s degrees before dedicating his life to education. He eventually became the first president of what is now Cheyney University.
It was a family.
“I have so many memories of spending my summers at Cheyney as a child
In Fall 2026, more than 30 Cheyney
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