PRESIDENT'S PERSPECTIVE

photo by Michael Sipe

Stories from a campaign

Nearly 60,000 individuals have made gifts to the Campaign for the University of Vermont, affirming their belief in the quality and value of the University. Knowing that we have surpassed the $250 million goal, and driving to go well beyond it, I want to evoke a few special moments along the way.

There was the moment toward the end of breakfast with the Rubenstein family when Steve Rubenstein sat back and, with a smile and moist eyes, said, “That would be a great honor,” committing $15 million to what is now the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources.

And there was the moment when Lenny Miller stood up in my office, remarking through tears that if his parents hadn’t left Europe he would have been killed by the Nazis. Then, turning to two of his children, he said, “You haven’t known why you’re here. I brought you because I wanted you to hear when I tell President Fogel that I’ve decided to make the $5 million gift to the Center”—the naming opportunity for the Carolyn and Leonard Miller Center for Holocaust Studies.

One day Rachel and I stopped at a parked car to say goodbye to Rey Moulton, who had made, with his wife Betsy Winder, the gift naming the artificial turf field we had just dedicated. Weakened by chemotherapy, sleepy with medications, Rey sat blanket-wrapped in his car while the UVM field hockey team surged up and down Moulton- Winder Field en route to a victory over Maine. “I hope I’ll see you again,” Rey said. He never did, but we will always picture him gazing from the car toward the student athletes giving their all on that perpetually green field.

I remember many eyes—including Buck and Doreen Freeman’s—filling with tears as we listened in the courtyard of the Given Building to accounts by recent UVM Medical College graduates of their work in rural and under-served parts of Vermont as a result of the Freeman Medical Scholars program. With their gifts through the Freeman Foundation to support Medical and Nursing Scholarships and Asian Studies, the Freeman’s are the Campaign’s leading donors at close to $25 million.

There are countless stories that I cannot tell first-hand: I think, for example, of the Gund family seeing how their passion for the environment, UVM’s environmental strengths, and the Gunds’ desire to invest in academic excellence all could come together in the gift that brought the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics to the University; of the generous scholarship gifts made by two exceptional chairs of the UVM Board, Bruce Lisman and Jim Pizzagalli; and of the decision by the Levin family to make a $1 million gift in memory of Jerry’s son Jonathan, thus laying the foundation for UVM’s urban partnerships with high schools like Christopher Columbus in the Bronx.

Here is a final vignette: the scholarship lunch last October for some 250 people, donors and their scholarship students. Two students spoke, Eric Little, a graduate of Milton High School in Vermont, and Asenett Rosario, a graduate of Christopher Columbus. Their stories were very different, Eric’s laced with wry humor, Asenett’s warm yet serenely serious, yet for each UVM had been life-transforming, and scholarship support had been essential for both. What shone through Skip Beitzel’s words when he spoke for the scores of donors present were the rewards of giving, the joy and satisfaction of knowing what one’s gifts have meant to students and to the University. 

Some 60,000 donors, every gift important, the small as well as the large: their investments in UVM have meant a great deal to all of us, deepening our obligation to do our utmost to deliver on the high expectations UVM has now created. For that, and for all that our students, staff, faculty, alumni, and friends have done in the course of the Campaign, we are profoundly grateful.

—Daniel Mark Fogel

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