Time Warner Cable, Minnesota, will offer scholarship money to students studying telecommunications at the University, in return for approval to wire Minneapolis residence halls for cable television.
The cable company will provide $150,000 over the next decade, broken down into three $5,000 need-based scholarships a year, said Craig Taylor, director of Community Economic Development.
He added that the cable company will also provide three internships per year over the next 10 years.
The scholarships will be available in the fall of 2001.
The company has also given a $50,000 grant to the University’s Office of Community Economic Development, which negotiated the Time Warner Scholarship and Business Initiative.
The grant will allow Carlson School of Management graduate students to work with businesses owned by women and minorities.
Time Warner Cable, currently Minneapolis’ sole cable provider, will pay the cost of upgrading the residence halls.
The company has already wired Wilkins and Comstock halls and expects to finish Pioneer and Centennial by mid-February.
Sanford and Territorial halls should be completed by mid-March, followed by Middlebrook in mid-April and Frontier in mid-May, said Housing and Residential Life director Mary Ann Ryan.
Students will only have to pay for the service if they activate cable in their rooms and they will be able to use the service as soon as the wiring of their hall is finished.
Time Warner has also agreed to special rate provisions for University students.
The company will not allow students’ rates to rise more than 5 percent in any single rate increase, Ryan said.
Residents of Bailey Hall on the St. Paul campus already receive cable through another provider.
Time Warner has offered other public institutions access to their cable programs in the past.
“This fits in well with what Time Warner Cable does every day with schools,” said Lance Leupold, a company representative. “We offer a lot of different free educational services to local schools. We’ve just never been connected to the University of Minnesota before.”

Seth Woehrle welcomes comments at [email protected]