Students

A new foundation has provided scholarships to students, for the first time in its short history.  

The student-founded Tisila Foundation provided five students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with scholarships in the 2023-2024 school year. Now, the foundation seeks to expand and reach even more students.  

The Tisila Foundation is currently fiscally sponsored by the Peltz Center for Jewish Life and aims to help cultivate future leaders and strengthen the Jewish community by eliminating financial barriers for college students. The Tisila Foundation reports it plans to become a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. 

The idea is that the scholarship money can assist students, so they spend less time focusing on finances, and more time engaging with the Jewish community, according to the foundation’s founder Jared Deck.  

The foundation has a video application, because Deck wants to make it easy to apply, compared with other scholarships that require an essay. 

For its first year, the foundation raised $10,000. The five recipients received amounts of either $1,000 or $3,000.  

Among those students was Erica Davis, a then-freshman at University of Wisconsin-Madison.  

“It wasn’t just a scholarship, it was a really exciting program to get more involved on campus,” said Davis, now a sophomore.  

As part of receiving the scholarship, the recipients are expected to come up with and carry out a goal for how they will help lead the Jewish community. The Tisilia Foundation is there as a resource along the way.  

Davis hosted two events for the Jewish community in May 2024, which involved singing and dancing, and was meant to lessen campus tensions related to encampments that began in April 2024. She said about 250 people showed up to the first event on May 1, and around 75 to 100 people were present for the second event on May 4.  

“The Jewish community at UW-Madison is super big, and so it was really nice to see,” she said. “It made everyone feel a little bit less alone.” 

Now, she plans to start a Students Supporting Israel UW-Madison chapter and host more events.  

How it started 

Deck came up with the scholarship idea in 2019 as a sophomore at Arizona State University when his friend, who he said was “a tremendous leader in the Jewish community,” had to work three different jobs to support herself and then graduated early for financial reasons. 

“[It] was obviously a blow to her aspirations, as well as a blow to the Jewish community, because we lost all the potential leadership that she could have done,” he said.  

Deck then made it his mission to ensure that the Jewish community would not miss out on any more student leaders.  

With his idea formed, as a college student, Deck then made phone calls and met with various community members and organizations, trying to launch his program. 

Shary Levitt is one of five Wisconsin advisory board members for the Tisila Foundation. She responded to Deck’s call in 2020 and has been with the foundation ever since. 

“I just thought I would help this young man,” Levitt said. “He was passionate and motivated and steadfast in his goal of creating this program, and I was inspired by it.” 

Deck graduated from Arizona State University in 2021 and the Wisconsin native now works as a manager at a marketing agency, in New York, while building the Tisila Foundation.  

Deck wants to reach more students like Davis, and he said that starts with spreading awareness of the program.  

“Whether it’s partnering, whether it’s joining one of our advisory boards, there’s lots of different ways to help,” Deck said.  

As of now, Deck is continuing to focus on the program at University of Wisconsin-Madison and expanding there, but he plans to expand the program to other universities as well in the future.

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How to apply 

• Go to tisilafoundation.org and click “Apply Now”  

• Upload video application  

• Upload basic information  

• Give the name of a community leader who can attest to your character in a short video