EASTBRIDGE, Vt. — The American College of Arts and Performing Arts (ACAPA) announced today the receipt of a $4.2 million endowment gift from alumna Patricia Calloway (BFA Dance, 1981), establishing the Calloway Scholarship for Dance — the largest single philanthropic gift in the college's 78-year history and the most substantial scholarship endowment ever created for ACAPA's Department of Dance.
The gift will fund two full-tuition scholarships annually for incoming students enrolled in the Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance program. The first awards are expected to be granted beginning in the Fall 2025 semester. Recipients will be selected on the basis of artistic merit, demonstrated financial need, and a commitment to dance as a lifelong vocation — criteria that Calloway herself helped craft in close consultation with ACAPA's administration and the Department of Dance faculty.
— Patricia Calloway (BFA Dance, 1981)
Gift Details at a Glance
| Gift Amount: | $4,200,000 (endowment) |
| Donor: | Patricia Calloway, BFA Dance 1981 |
| Award: | Two (2) full-tuition scholarships per academic year |
| Eligibility: | Incoming BFA Dance students; merit + financial need |
| First Awards: | Fall Semester 2025 |
| Department: | Department of Dance, ACAPA |
| Announced: | February 14, 2025 |
About the Donor: Patricia Calloway
Patricia Calloway grew up in Montpelier, Vermont, the eldest of four children in a working-class family. Her father, Gerald Calloway, worked at a paper mill in Berlin; her mother, Ruth, taught elementary school in Barre. Dance entered Patricia's life at age seven, when her mother enrolled her in Saturday morning classes at a local studio — a small financial sacrifice the family made consistently for a decade. By the time she auditioned for ACAPA in 1977, Patricia had won regional recognition for her modern dance work and had studied briefly under a former Alvin Ailey dancer who taught summers in Burlington.
She arrived at ACAPA in the fall of 1977 as a scholarship student herself, receiving a partial merit award that covered roughly a third of her tuition. The rest, she has said in interviews, was cobbled together through federal grants, work-study positions in the college's costume shop and box office, and a small annual loan that took her nearly a decade to repay after graduation. "I ironed costumes for 15 hours a week and still worried every spring that I couldn't come back in the fall," she recalled in a conversation with ACAPA President Dr. Miriam Osei-Bonsu earlier this year. "That anxiety is not conducive to art. I don't want any of our students carrying that."
At ACAPA, Calloway studied under the late Professor Delores Wynne-Harper, who chaired the Dance Department from 1969 to 1994 and is widely credited with building the department's rigorous modern and contemporary technique curriculum. She also trained with visiting artist José Moreno during his residency in 1979, an experience she has described as pivotal. Calloway graduated in 1981 with a BFA in Dance, with a concentration in contemporary technique and choreography.
A Career Built Across Stages and Studios
After graduating, Calloway moved to New York City with $300 in savings and a letter of introduction from Professor Wynne-Harper to several downtown choreographers. She spent the early 1980s performing with smaller contemporary companies in Manhattan and Brooklyn, including a three-year stint with the Meridian Dance Collective, a now-defunct company that toured regionally and appeared twice at the American Dance Festival in Durham, North Carolina.
In 1986, Calloway transitioned from performance into choreography and teaching. She joined the faculty of a well-regarded private studio in Tribeca, where she eventually became Director of Contemporary Dance. In 1993, she founded Threshold Dance Works, a New York-based nonprofit company that earned a loyal following for its minimalist, emotionally direct style. Threshold performed at venues including Dance Theater Workshop, the Joyce Theater, and, on two occasions, Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival in Becket, Massachusetts.
Threshold Dance Works ceased operations in 2009, a casualty of the financial crisis and shifting arts funding priorities. Calloway has spoken openly about the difficulty of that period: "Closing Threshold was a grief I'm still not entirely done with. But it also clarified what I wanted to do with whatever I had left to give."
Following the dissolution of Threshold, Calloway shifted her attention to arts consulting and nonprofit leadership. She served on the boards of two New York arts organizations and consulted on capital campaigns for several small performing arts institutions. In 2014, she married longtime partner and architect David Perini and relocated to Burlington, Vermont, returning to her home state after more than three decades away.
— Dr. Miriam Osei-Bonsu, President, ACAPA
Why She Gave — and Why Now
Calloway has been a consistent, if relatively modest, donor to ACAPA since the mid-1990s, giving annually to the general fund and, after 2010, specifically to the Department of Dance. But the idea of a transformative endowment gift took shape gradually, she says, after a conversation with a current ACAPA dance student at an alumni weekend in Eastbridge in 2022.
"I was sitting in the Linden Hall courtyard with a student — a junior, remarkable dancer from rural Georgia — and she told me she was thinking about not coming back in the fall because she couldn't make the numbers work," Calloway recounted. "I had that exact conversation with myself, every spring, for four years. Something in me just said: this is the thing. This is what I can do."
The conversation led to a series of meetings with ACAPA's Office of Institutional Advancement and President Osei-Bonsu. Calloway worked with the college's legal and financial teams to structure the gift as a permanent endowment — meaning the principal of $4.2 million will remain invested in perpetuity, with the annual income from the fund used to support the scholarships. Under current projections, the endowment is expected to generate sufficient annual income to cover full tuition for two students each year, with the fund growing over time.
Calloway insisted that the scholarship carry both a merit and a need-based component. "I want kids who are genuinely excellent and genuinely can't afford it," she said. "One without the other doesn't feel right to me. ACAPA should be full of the best dancers in the country, and economic background should not be the filter."
She also requested that the scholarship selection process involve current Dance Department faculty, rather than being administered solely by financial aid administrators. "The faculty know what a real dancer looks like. I trust them to find these students."
Statement from the Department of Dance
Professor Anneliese Rutherford, Chair of the Department of Dance, issued the following statement on behalf of the department's faculty:
"Patricia Calloway's generosity is humbling and galvanizing in equal measure. For too long, financial hardship has quietly shaped who gets to study here and who does not — often invisibly, in the form of students who leave before they should, or who never audition at all. The Calloway Scholarship changes that calculus in a real and lasting way. We are deeply grateful, and we are committed to honoring this gift by finding and nurturing the most extraordinary dance students we can."
The Department of Dance at ACAPA currently enrolls approximately 140 students across BFA and certificate programs. The Calloway Scholarship will represent the department's only fully endowed, full-tuition scholarship, supplementing a range of existing partial merit awards and general financial aid packages.
Application and Eligibility
The Calloway Scholarship for Dance will be open to all students applying to the BFA in Dance program beginning with the Fall 2025 admissions cycle. Applicants wishing to be considered for the scholarship do not need to submit a separate application; all students who complete the BFA Dance audition and admissions process will be automatically reviewed for the award by a faculty selection committee.
Final selection of the two annual recipients will be made in April of each year, following on-campus audition weekends. Students selected for the scholarship will receive an award letter by May 1. The scholarship is renewable for up to four years, contingent on satisfactory academic standing and continued enrollment in the BFA Dance program. Scholarship recipients will be recognized at ACAPA's annual donor recognition event each fall.
For more information, contact the Office of Financial Aid or the Department of Dance.
How to Give to ACAPA Dance
Patricia Calloway's gift joins a growing tradition of alumni and donor support for the Department of Dance. ACAPA's Dance Annual Fund supports equipment, guest artist residencies, student travel to festivals and competitions, and production costs for the department's four annual performances. Gifts of any size are welcome. To discuss estate gifts, endowment naming opportunities, or other major gift arrangements, contact the Office of Institutional Advancement at (802) 555-0192 or giving@acapa.edu.
Media inquiries should be directed to the ACAPA Office of Communications. A high-resolution photograph of Patricia Calloway is available upon request. Patricia Calloway is available for limited press interviews; requests should be submitted through the Office of Communications.