Delano natives Ralph and Jan Carpenter donated $100,000 to the Bakersfield College Kern Community College District on April 25.

The Carpenters have been long advocates of higher education. Both Carpenters hold college degrees. All three of their children, Susan, Monty and Stacy, are Delano High School graduates and have all attended college.

“The road out of the vineyard is called education,” Ralph Carpenter said.

The couple has been making generous donations to the college since the early 1970s for books, tuitions and scholarships. Carpenter said that over the years, this amounted to a total of $38,000.

“But as the needs of the college increased, we found it necessary to have a more perpetual educational foundation to carry on an annual basis, long after we are gone.

Thus, each year the money earned will be used at the college under the directions of the local foundation board. This will go on forever.

The $100,000 is part of an endowment plan, therefore increasing every year depending on the interest rate, said John Drow, Delano campus foundation treasurer.

“The money donated will be used for books, tuitions and scholarships,” Carpenter said.

In setting up these grants, Carpenter made up the motto of the college: “No student shall be turned away for lack of ability to pay.”

Carpenter said if you knock on the door, you will be guaranteed a chance to go to the Delano center of BC.

The new campus is under construction west of Delano. This will greatly increase the number of students and the number of courses offered at the Delano campus.

Carpenter said that with help of BC president Bill Andrews and Sandra Serrano, KCCD chancellor, the college will double the enrollment this fall in student nursing at Delano.

Nursing courses are the most expensive courses a college can offer, and those courses will be offered because of the Carpenters’ donation.