Giving
Campaign UW: Creating Futures Wraps Up
More than 50,000 donors gave to programs in the College of Arts and Sciences during Campaign UW: Creating Futures, which officially ended on June 30.
The $283 million given or pledged surpassed the College’s $240 million campaign goal by a generous margin. While most of the gifts are for current use, donors also created more than 300 new endowments to provide permanently increased support for faculty, students, research, and programs.
“These gifts make a huge difference to the College,” says Ana Mari Cauce, dean of Arts and Sciences. “I know from experience that the hard work of our faculty, staff, and students changes people’s lives for the better in ways we often can’t anticipate. I want to thank everyone who contributed the resources that help our people do their best work.”
Faculty and staff not only benefit from gifts, they also make gifts. Three years ago, the University put forward a challenge to current and retired faculty and staff, offering to match gifts (up to $10,000) that create new endowments to support undergraduate or graduate students. Current and retired faculty and staff responded generously, creating 119 new named endowments to help students.
What’s next? “The Campaign may have ended, but our need for support has not,” says Cauce. “We are grateful for every gift, and we are inspired and encouraged by the generosity of so many people who enthusiastically support the College.”
A Granddaughter Honors UW Pioneers
When Sally Black (‘80, ‘83) returned to college as an English major (and later a graduate student in social work) after raising her family, she spent many hours in Padelford Hall, home of the Department of English. Few classmates knew that the building’s namesake, Frederick Padelford, was her grandfather.
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| Sally Black. Photo by Nancy Joseph. |
Now Black and her husband Alan are celebrating her academic lineage—and supporting graduate students—by establishing the Jessie Elizabeth Pepper Padelford and Frederick Morgan Padelford Endowed Fellowships in English. The fellowships will help graduate students in their first year of study and then again while they work on their dissertation.
“I took the University for granted as a child, because it was so much a part of my family’s life,” says Black. “As an adult, I felt that supporting the University would be a personal and meaningful way to remember my grandparents.”
Frederick Padelford was a professor of English and later dean of the Graduate School. He and Jessie came to the UW in 1901, just six years after Denny Hall opened as the first building on the current Seattle campus.
Black recalls her grandparents’ stories of those early days, which highlight just how much the campus—and city—have changed.
“My grandparents lived nearby and had a milk cow in their backyard,” says Black. “My grandfather would walk the cow to campus and tie it up in front of Denny Hall, then teach all day before taking the cow home. He said the grass was better on campus.” Black adds with a laugh, “That was one educated cow.”
Black pointedly included her grandmother’s name in the endowment. “She was the one who did all the entertaining of my grandfather’s colleagues and students,” Black explains. “He was the one who got all the kudos, but she was such an important part of the package. She was the glue who held the whole thing together.”
What would her grandparents think about the endowments created in their name?
“I think they would be delighted,” says Black. “They would be so pleased that there was a grandchild who remembered their contributions. I hope that it will help my children and grandchildren learn more about their ancestors and their roots.”
Finding a Muse in Travel
Ask Matt Jarvis (‘96) when he first became interested in photography and he’ll recall a trip to Canada. Ask him when his photography career took off, and he’ll mention another trip, this one to China.
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| Matt Jarivs (left) with Sol Hashemi, recipient of the inaugural Jarvis Award for Photography. Photo by Karen Orders. |
Travel, it seems, is Jarvis’s muse. This year he decided to share his inspiration by creating a travel scholarship for photography majors in the School of Art. The Matt J. Jarvis Award for Photography provides $2,500 for a student to travel to a country of his or her choice to pursue a photography project.
“In my work, I’m interested in cultural identity and how people fit into the place where they live,” explains Jarvis. “Through travel, I’ve learned a lot more about the world. I wanted to give other people that same opportunity.”
Jarvis’s photographs can be seen in local, state, and regional magazines as well as art exhibits. His gift to the School of Art is funded through proceeds from his photography work as well as from the sale of cattle raised on his family’s ranch in Pawhuska, Oklahoma.
“My family is Osage Indian, and we have land out here in Oklahoma,” says Jarvis. “We’ve been ranching since before the 1900s.”
Jarvis is committed to continuing the travel grant annually for the next 20 years,. He’s even included it in his life insurance policy—just in case. But he’s planning to stick around for a long time. After all, he’s got places to go.
“Next summer I’m going to Indonesia and Malaysia,” he says, after rattling off past destinations that range from Cambodia to the Carribbean to Europe. “No doubt about it—I’ve been lucky.”
Honoring a Math Ambassdaor
Each spring, 1,200 high school students converge on the UW campus for Math Day, which highlights math’s role in the real world. Over the summer, two dozen high schoolers spend six weeks on campus for more in-depth exploration, through the Summer Institute for Mathematics at the UW (SIMUW). At nearly the same time, top undergrads from across the country arrive to work with UW faculty on mathematics research through the Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program.
Exhausted yet? Imagine how Jim Morrow feels.
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| Jim Morrow. Photo by Nancy Joseph. |
Morrow, professor of mathematics, is the driving force behind Math Day and is the UW director for the national REU program. He also is heavily involved in SIMUW.
Then there’s Morrow’s role as coach for the UW teams (often more than one) that participate in the international Mathematical Modeling Contest each year. UW teams have scored an astonishing seven wins in the past six years.
To acknowledge Morrow’s exceptional work in mathematics outreach, three donors are funding a term professorship, to be held by Morrow for three years. Term professorships provide current funding equivalent to what an endowed professorship would pay out over the same period— in this case, $15,000 per year.
The donors are George Kauffman, a member of the A&S Board; Vaho Rebassoo, who earned his PhD from the UW Department of Mathematics in 1977; and Donald Fowler.
“This term professorship has been a way to do something good for Professor Morrow and the department,” says Rebassoo, who had Morrow as his PhD adviser. “Jim’s role in the department is much more than to be a good instructor. He energizes the department, encouraging teachers to put more effort into teaching and students to put more effort into learning. From what I can see, his energy raises the level of the whole department.”
Introducing East Asia
The Freeman family history reads like an historical novel, with Asia
as a central theme.
After traveling to China in 1920 to teach English, Mansfield Freeman opened the Shanghai office of an insurance company that was later
to become AIG. His son Houghton, raised in China, worked for AIG in Shanghai after attending college in the U.S. He left China when the Communists took over—his family was among the last to evacuate—and relocated to Tokyo to set up an AIG office. He remained in Japan for two decades, raising his children there.
The Freeman Foundation reflects the family’s Asian roots. Administered by Houghton and Doreen Freeman and their son Graeme, the foundation promotes knowledge and understanding between Americans and the people of East Asia, with an emphasis on reaching K-12 teachers.
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| Art teacher Tacy Bigelow visits with a Buddhist priest in Kyoto, Japan, during a tour made possible through Freeman Foundation support . |
The East Asia Resource Center (EARC) in the UW’s Jackson School of International Studies has received nearly $9 million from the Freeman Foundation since 1997, funding workshops, seminars, summer institutes, and study tours to China, Japan, and Korea for K-12 teachers. “We would not be able to provide these programs without this funding,” says EARC director Mary Bernson. “The vast majority of our support comes from the Freeman Foundation.”
Teachers often begin by signing up for a workshop and return to participate in a longer program. The study tours are a popular offering (requiring a very competitive application process), with the Foundation covering much of the cost. “The trips are heavily subsidized,” says Bernson. “Teachers simply can’t afford to do this otherwise.”
Participants have marveled at the impact the experience has had on their teaching. “They say that having been to Asia changes everything,” says Bernson. “When they come back, they throw out or revise everything they’ve taught about these countries. We hear that over and over from our study tour alumni.”
The Freeman Foundation also funds an undergraduate initiative
at the UW to make courses about Asia more accessible to non-majors.
The support has allowed the College of Arts and Sciences to hire additional faculty and teaching assistants in Asian studies, fund the development of new courses, and provide travel awards for students
and faculty.
“The Freeman family believes that it is vitally important that the people of East Asia and the U.S. understand each other better,” says Bernson. “They are so dedicated to this that they not only provide grants but also administer the foundation and meet with grantees. Their personal commitment is inspirational.”
Return to Table of Contents, Autumn 2008