The Revel Fulton Market in the West Loop was filled with more than 650 Murphy Scholars, Murphy Scholar alumni, corporate sponsors, partnership high schools, founders, donors, families and friends who came out to support the event Sept. 28.

The event celebrated three decades of igniting potential and enriching lives of Murphy Scholars and raised more than $1.5 million to support the organization’s mission to give financial assistance and educational support to Chicago students from under-resourced neighborhoods, starting with a scholarship to college prep high schools throughout the city and country.

“Murphy Scholars are graduating from Chicago’s most selective high schools, the country’s top boarding schools and from many of the nation’s leading universities at rates that far surpass the national average for all students in the US,” Jose Rodriguez, executive director of DMSF told the crowd gathered.

Murphy Scholars attend and have graduated from more than 25 Chicagoland Catholic high schools including Brother Rice, Christ the King, Cristo Rey High School, DePaul College Prep, Fenwick, Loyola Academy, Nazareth, Regina Dominican and St. Ignatius. This year more than 460 Murphy Scholars from Englewood, Little Village, Uptown, North Lawndale, and more than forty communities in the Chicagoland area are benefiting from the program at more than 80 partner high schools throughout the City of Chicago and at boarding schools around the country. More than 3,000 scholarships have been awarded in the last 30 years.

“DMSF changed the course of my life,” Dennericka Brooks told those gathered. The Murphy Scholar went on to graduate from Grinnell College, and Loyola University School of Law. Today she mentors DMSF Scholars and is a supervisory attorney at Legal Aid Chicago.