This Week @ UC San Diego

Gifts from the Heart: Student Support Campaign Surpasses $50 Million Goal

Every February, UC San Diego scholarship recipients and donors connect at the Hearts and Scholars dinner. For students, it’s an opportunity to thank the individuals who have helped to make their education possible. For donors, it’s a chance to see the impact of their gifts—through their students’ accomplishments and dreams. At this year’s dinner, taking place Feb. 21, there will be added cause for celebration: the successful close of “Invent the Future: The UC San Diego Student Support Campaign,” which has surpassed its $50 million fundraising goal.

“This is an important milestone for our campus and all of our students who receive scholarships and fellowships, thanks to our generous supporters,” said Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla. “Private support is critical to ensuring that highly motivated and talented students of all backgrounds have the opportunity to pursue their education at UC San Diego. The gift of education is truly a gift from the heart.”

Launched three years ago with a $2 million fellowship endowment from the Siebel Foundation, Invent the Future closed on Dec. 31, 2012, raising nearly $2.5 million more than its campaign goal. The funds raised will help support the growing number of students who need financial support to offset rising fees and the cost of living.

“UC San Diego’s ability to advance research and impact the regional economy is directly related to the quality of its faculty and student body,” said Steve Relyea, vice chancellor for External and Business Affairs. “We thank the many generous donors who invested in UC San Diego students so that we can continue to recruit the best and brightest to our campus.”

Invent the Future donors range from campus leadership to alumni, friends and students themselves. Last year, UC San Diego awarded more than 1,400 undergraduate scholarships worth more than $3.3 million and 700 graduate fellowships worth $7.3 million.

“I am so thankful,” said Edward Sommers, a nanoengineering major and recipient of the George Parker Memorial Scholarship. Sommers’ scholarship was established to support students at UC San Diego who were raised in foster care for three or more years. He is currently working to establish a Big Brother Engineering program to help guide foster youth on their educational journey. “I want to set an example for others and share my story with a bigger audience—to encourage others never to give up and to realize that they can go far.”

Key donors to UC San Diego’s Invent the Future campaign to date include:

• Richard Atkinson—former president of the 10-campus University of California system and chancellor at the University of California, San Diego from 1980-1995—designated, with his wife Rita, $5.7 million to support fellowships for graduate students at UC San Diego.
• Jerome and Miriam Katzin endowed a $4 million fellowship fund to support graduate students. The gift will establish The Katzin Prize Endowment Fund to support UC San Diego graduate students who demonstrate outstanding talent and promise.
• Local philanthropist and business owner Pauline Foster made a $2.5 million charitable gift commitment to the Rady School of Management to endow M.B.A. student fellowships, which are scholarships for graduate students.
• In 2009, the Siebel Foundation recognized the Jacobs School of Engineering's pioneering efforts in bioengineering with a $2 million endowment to fund fellowships for the top five bioengineering graduate students each year.
• Longtime campus supporters Joan and Irwin Jacobs—Irwin is a former faculty member and co-founder of Qualcomm—gave more than $6 million to the Jacobs School Scholars and Fellows program to help fund four-year undergraduate scholarships and first-year graduate fellowships to attract talented students to UC San Diego’s Jacobs School of Engineering.
• Alumnus Ken Kroner, ’88, and his wife, Jennifer, have expressed their gratitude for the training Ken received at UC San Diego by making a $1 million gift to fund the Kroner Family Endowed Fellowship in Social Sciences.
• With a gift of $265,000, alumna Wendy Kwok, ’99, will provide scholarship support for outstanding UC San Diego undergraduates majoring in biological sciences.

Although the Invent the Future campaign exceeded its fundraising goal, UC San Diego will continue to face a critical need for student scholarships and fellowships in the face of declining state funds and University of California budget concerns. To help, please visit the Scholarships and Student Life website at www.studentsupport.ucsd.edu and the Graduate Fellowships site at www.giving.ucsd.edu/fellowships.

 

Side bar of student stories (can we use the lead in format similar to the one we used for this story:
http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/feature/competition_heats_up_for_uc_san_diegos_graduate_student_recruitment).

 

Scholarship and Fellowship Recipients

The gift of education has the power to transform lives. For a first generation college student, a scholarship can change a life’s trajectory. A fellowship for a talented graduate student may hold the key to a groundbreaking discovery that will impact all of society. Following are the stories of four outstanding scholarship and fellowship recipients and the exciting work they are doing at UC San Diego.

Gena Glickman, doctoral student in psychology

National Research Service Award, Chancellor’s Collaboratories Grant

Gena Glickman’s research focuses on how natural daily cycles of light and darkness serve to regulate circadian rhythms, seasonal cycles and hormonal fluctuations in mammals. Disruption of this pattern can lead to a breakdown in normal homeostasis, compromising physical health and wellbeing. Glickman has identified ways in which different lighting characteristics can impact circadian response in mammals, findings that have implications for further understanding alertness and performance, sleep disturbances and hormone sensitive cancers in humans. In addition to the financial support, Glickman said that fellowships and grants have provided her with valuable opportunities that have helped her to become a more competitive and promising candidate for jobs following graduate school.

Aaron Louie, undergraduate microbiology major

Woo Family Scholar

Aaron Louie’s paternal grandmother fled rural Taishan for the United States in 1974. For more than a decade, she worked in Chinatown sweatshops to bring her nine children to the U.S., one by one. That is Louie’s heritage. At UC San Diego, Louie has conducted numerous undergraduate research projects studying bacterial pathogenesis and innate immunity, among other studies. He also volunteers with the UC San Diego Student-run Free Clinic and Owen Clinic. He plans to pursue a dual M.D./Ph.D. program to explore new applications of biomedical research—a goal that will make him not only a first-generation college graduate, but also the first in his extended family to attain either an M.D. or Ph.D. degree. “The generosity of donors has allowed me to pursue discoveries and explore important questions,” said Louie. “Their altruism keeps education alive, and the future is something we should nurture, not starve."

Helen Saad, doctoral student in bioengineering

Siebel Scholar

Fascinated by human intelligence, Helen Saad is delving into brain research in bioengineering professor Gabriel Silva’s laboratory. Through theoretical work guided by experimental findings, Saad aims to better elucidate how brain structure and connectivity, synaptic strength, and neuronal excitability are regulated in concert to optimize the performance of neuronal circuits and shape intelligence. After receiving her bachelor’s degree in computer engineering and prior to joining UC San Diego's Ph.D. program, Saad held technical and leadership positions in multinational companies, and she is the first Lebanese citizen to receive the International Fulbright Science and Technology Award. Saad aims to one day establish a bioengineering research center and a business park in her home country of Lebanon. She wants to help create a first-class nonprofit, nonsectarian research facility and to stimulate science- and technology-based entrepreneurship, hoping that this project will help people in Lebanon to transcend ethnic, religious and political boundaries.

Edward Sommers, undergraduate nanoengineering major

George Parker Memorial Scholar

Edward Sommers and his seven siblings were raised by his grandmother in South Central Los Angeles until circumstances led him to be placed in a group home. When he enrolled at a local community college, one of his professors inspired him to pursue engineering and biology. He transferred to UC San Diego and received the George Parker Memorial Scholarship, which was established to support students at UC San Diego who were raised in foster care for three or more years. Today, the nanoengineering major is working to establish a Big Brother Engineering program to help guide foster youth on their educational journey.

 

To help support UC San Diego’s outstanding students, please visit the Scholarships and Student Life website at www.studentsupport.ucsd.edu and the Graduate Fellowships site at www.giving.ucsd.edu/fellowships.