The Rotary Club of San Marcos sponsors its annual Casino Night fundraiser on Friday, February 28, at the Centex Wing of the Commemorative Air Force Museum at the San Marcos Airport. Each year the club dedicates 75 percent of proceeds from the event to a local nonprofit
This year the beneficiary will be The Beth and Kelly Damphousse Foster Educational Support Endowment at Texas State University. Dr. Kelly Damphousse has been the President of Texas State University since 2022.
Inspired by Dr. Damphousse’s experience with foster children growing up, the Damphousse Endowment helps foster students who “at no fault of their own were thrown into these circumstances.” The endowment provides financial assistance beyond traditional tuition coverage, helping with essential needs like clothing, housing, and technology. The recipients are Texas State students who demonstrate financial need and who were in the Texas Foster Care system (state conservatorship in the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services on or before their 18th birthday).
Dr. Damphousse was adopted and his adoptive parents took in foster children throughout his childhood, which he says left him with a passion for justice and inclusion. He is a first-generation college graduate who personally knows, he says, the life-changing impact that higher education can have on a person’s life. Only five percent of former foster kids graduate from college, often for financial reasons. The Damphousse Endowment was created seeks to help more fosters succeed at Texas State.