Stories of Support

Honoring and remembering

By Denise Lee

When Margaret “Peggy” Schmitz, a longtime volunteer at the Seymour Marine Discovery Center at Long Marine Lab, died last year, her friends and family wanted to honor her memory.

A year later, 40 gifts in Peggy’s memory have benefited the Friends of Long Marine Lab, the Seymour Center's community support group. By donating to this fund, her friends and family are supporting education, exhibit, and aquarium programs, plus daily operations and staffing of the Seymour Center. Her legacy of ocean conservation lives on at the Seymour Center.

An honor or memory gift to UC Santa Cruz is a heartfelt way to pay tribute to someone special while supporting the mission and programs of the university.

In FY 2009–10, UC Santa Cruz received 562 tribute gifts totaling $467,408 in recognition of 200 people. Gift amounts ranged from $10 to $173,423, with a median gift amount of $100. Generous donations of $250, $500, and $1,000 were common. More than 400 gifts were in memory of loved ones and over 150 gifts were made to celebrate marriages, birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, retirement, and other milestones.

Just as meaningful as the sentiment of these gifts is their impact on the UC Santa Cruz campus and community. Tribute gifts this year provided valuable support for more than 100 campus programs, including:

• The Arboretum (in memory of volunteer Madeline Kauffman)
• The Morton Marcus Poetry Archive (in memory of Santa Cruz poet Morton Marcus)
• A Creative Writing Scholarship (in memory of student Kenneth Andrew Gram)
• The Frank Zwart Endowment for Campus Beauty (in honor of campus architect Frank Zwart’s retirement)

Join with these thoughtful donors in supporting UCSC by honoring or remembering a family member, friend, faculty or staff member, colleague, or volunteer. Click here to make a tribute gift online. A card announcing your gift—without mentioning the amount—will be mailed to the honoree or next of kin. You can also mail a check to UCSC Gift Administration, University Relations, 1156 High St., Santa Cruz CA 95064; make checks payable to the “UC Santa Cruz Foundation.”

Honor and Memory Gifts 2009-2010

Bill Anderson and Linda Davis Anderson

Celebrating 20 Years of Supporting Women Scientists

“You’re married. You don’t need financial support for education.” That’s the fallacy Linda Anderson, UCSC project scientist and donor is working to overcome. “People assume that because you’re an adult, you have the money to pay for school. It’s often even harder for returning students,” Anderson said.

UC Santa Cruz donors Bill and Linda Anderson and Linda's father Raymond E. Davis Jr.

That’s why she and her husband Bill established the Marilyn C. and Raymond E. Davis Memorial Scholarships for Re-entry Women in Science and Engineering in memory of Linda’s parents. Both Anderson and her mother were re-entry students who knew the challenge of balancing adult responsibilities with a college education.

The inheritance Anderson received after the death of her parents offered her a unique opportunity for expressing herself. “Using the money to establish a scholarship in their name was the right choice for us. It’s also an inspiration for others who agree that women in the sciences need support,” Anderson said.

Anderson chose to focus her giving in this way because she remembers a time when women were rare in the sciences. “Bill and I give each year. I wanted to do it because I wanted to give money away right away, but we want the fund to grow so we can support more women in the future,” she said.

Other donors agree. “One woman I don’t even know has donated to the scholarship fund for three years in a row,” Anderson said. “My aunt and a female cousin who is an oncologist have also supported the fund.”

Since the scholarship was established in 1990, the Marilyn C. and Raymond E. Davis Memorial Scholarships for Re-entry Women in Science and Engineering have provided monetary awards to over 100 women in the sciences.

The scholarship fund provides two types of grants: professional development awards and urgently needed funds. Professional development awards can be used to support activities such as field research or publication of articles. “Sometimes you just need airfare to get to a conference,” Anderson said. “We’re here to support the thousands of little expenses that accompany an education in the sciences.”

Anderson is amazed by the obstacles the scholarship candidates overcome. One recent recipient “left an abusive marriage with three young boys. While on welfare, she was pursuing an undergraduate degree. In addition to managing her family life and speaking out for welfare women in four-year colleges, she managed to do research and attend national meetings to present her work on six occasions.” Anderson recounted. “We funded her to travel to present a paper for a competition put on by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), where, as one of two undergraduates competing with graduate students, she received an honorable mention.”

To learn more about this student award or to support its goals at UC Santa Cruz, please contact Kathleen Hughes at (831) 459-4552 or khughes@ucsc.edu.

Thanks to one family's generosity, women who return to school at UC Santa Cruz to pursue a career in the sciences have a valuable resource. If you would like to learn more about endowment giving, visit http://giving.ucsc.edu/endowments.php