The campaign trail
Six years ago, The Campaign for the University of Vermont set out with a goal of raising $250 million. 278,461,114 dollars and 79,000 donors later, the destination has been reached and then some. But a campaign, like a journey, is defined by more than mere numbers on the odometer. The greatest measure is found in the experience along the way and the new ground upon which one stands at trip's end. In this issue, we share some of the stories behind the success of The Campaign for the University of Vermont and offer a glimpse of how new support is already transforming UVM.
Photo by Raj Chawla
Caring for Healthcare
It’s a nationwide problem, all the more acute in Vermont—a shortage of nurses and physicians to care for an aging population. But thanks to the Freeman Foundation of New York, New York, and Stowe, Vermont, significant efforts are in place at UVM to counter these trends.
The Freeman Medical Scholars Program has been in existence since 2000, with the goal of providing incentives for medical students to stay in Vermont and for physicians being recruited to practice in Vermont, especially in rural and underserved regions. Since inception, four-hundred UVM medical students who make a commitment to return to Vermont to practice have become Freeman Medical Scholars, receiving generous scholarship support. Most are still in training at the College of Medicine or in postgraduate residency training programs, and others have already become practicing physicians in Vermont or are serving Vermonters in practices in adjacent states.
In addition, the Freeman Educational Loan Repayment Program recruits physicians to practice in Vermont and helps to retain them in the state. As every medical student knows, the educational debt burden at the end of medical school can be a heavy load. The Freeman educational loan repayment program offers physicians, including those just completing residency training, much-needed assistance in repaying a portion of their medical school loans in return for a commitment to practice in Vermont. Seventy-one physicians have been recruited to Vermont since the program began.
In all, 134 physicians are practicing in Vermont today, in each of its fourteen counties, who likely would not have been there without the assistance of the Freeman-supported efforts.
The foundation also established a Freeman Nurse Scholars Program that has had a similar positive impact on the nursing profession in Vermont. Since 2001 when the program began, 280 Vermont nursing students from UVM and the Vermont State Colleges have received Freeman merit-based nursing scholarships, and 180 Nurse Scholars have graduated and are employed as nurses in Vermont.
All in all, including its support for the Freeman Medical Scholars Program, the Freeman Educational Loan Repayment Program, and the University’s Asian Studies Program, the Freeman Foundation was the largest single donor to The Campaign for the University of Vermont, with gifts totaling nearly $24.5 million.
“Although the Freeman programs are still relatively young, they have had a remarkable impact on health care in Vermont,” says Dr. Mildred A. Reardon, M.D. ’67, director of the Freeman Medical Scholars Program. “Already, nearly one in ten of Vermont’s physicians have been recruited to and retained in Vermont because they received a Freeman Scholarship, Freeman Educational Loan Repayment award to reduce their educational debt, or both.”
Photo by Mario Morgado
A Level Playing Field
“Quality facilities are critical to any Division I athletic program,” says Bob Corran, UVM’s director of athletics. “They impact recruiting, revenue potential, and the ability to host league championships.”
In recent years at UVM, Exhibit A illustrating this concept might be Moulton Winder Field, the University’s first artificial turf facility, which opened in October 2005.
“The new field has made a remarkable difference for lacrosse and field hockey, and we are already seeing significant improvement in their performance,” Corran continues. “Other teams like soccer have also benefited by having a good, dry surface to use during times of the year that were previously too cold or muddy. These are the kinds of things that put us on a level playing field with our competitors. The gifts we’ve received to improve existing facilities and add new fields have been critical.”
Moulton Winder Field is named in honor of Betsy Winder and the late Reynolds E. “Rey” Moulton, Jr., of Manchester, Massachusetts, whose $1 million gift financed a major portion of the construction. Funding for the $2.6 million project was provided through private donors to The Campaign for the University of Vermont, with major gifts from the families of other current and former student-athletes, including Phil McKnight ’04 and Andrew Goldfarb ’08. Additional gifts were received from alumnus Tony Reilly ’89 and his wife Danielle, as well as an anonymous donor.
Betsy Winder, mother of senior field hockey player Stirling Winder and a standout in the sport during her own college years at Lehigh University, says she wanted to help make a new artificial turf field a reality to bring it up to par with other teams in the league. When Stirling Winder arrived as a freshman, UVM played the few home league games it had at Middlebury College with very few fans in attendance other than parents of players. Good crowds turning out at the facility just south of Gutterson Fieldhouse has changed all of that. “We were one of the last Division I teams without a turf field, and now we have one of the nicest ones around,” Stirling says. “It has been huge for us in term of home games.”
It’s also been huge for other events, such as the Vermont High School Field Hockey State Championships. “My stepdad would have been very pleased if he had known how much the entire state of Vermont has benefited from the field," Stirling says. "I know my mom loves seeing how much use it’s getting from everyone."
Bronx to Burlington
UVM alumna Anna Levin Nicholson’s brother Jonathan loved teaching and was dedicated to the underprivileged students who made up the majority of the student population at William Howard Taft High School in the Bronx, New York. His students knew him not only as a gifted teacher who opened their minds to the world of poetry and literature but also as a mentor and friend. As the son of Time Warner chairman and chief executive Gerald Levin, he could have chosen a privileged and high-profile lifestyle. But the chance to make a positive impact on the lives of inner-city youth made teaching his passion. Then tragedy struck. Jonathan was murdered in his Upper West Side apartment by a former student on May 30, 1997, only days after Anna graduated from UVM with a degree in social work.
At the time of Jonathan’s death, Gerald Levin and Barbara Riley had been considering establishing a scholarship fund at UVM because of Anna’s educational experience in the College of Education & Social Services. A year after the tragic loss of Jonathan, the family decided to honor his memory by establishing a scholarship fund that would make a UVM education possible for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Gerald and Barbara created the Jonathan Levin Scholarship Fund to support students from metropolitan New York, northern New Jersey, Boston, and Philadelphia who could not attend UVM without financial assistance.
“That gift was a catalyst for so many good things at UVM that advanced our commitment to enhancing the diversity of the student body,” says Kathleen Kelleher, the University's principal gifts officer. “The Jonathan Levin Scholarship had a ripple effect in terms of our ability to form our partnership with Christopher Columbus High School in the Bronx, which then led to another very significant relationship with JetBlue Airways.”
UVM’s partnership with Christopher Columbus High School (CCHS) is designed to promote early college awareness, provide counseling to students and families about financial aid opportunities, offer individual counseling sessions to students, pair UVM faculty with high school faculty in their academic disciplines, and provide high school college counselors with realistic assessments of students’ readiness to attend UVM.
The program’s goal is to raise students’ awareness of college opportunities generally, though it has also been proven to be an effective way to recruit capable UVM students from diverse socio-economic backgrounds.
Since the first partnership was launched in 1999, the university has enrolled 131 African, Latino/a, Asian, and Native American (ALANA) students from partnership high schools, including 82 from Christopher Columbus, making CCHS the largest feeder school for ALANA students during the period and the largest out-of-state feeder school for first-time, full-time undergraduates overall. Between fall 1999 and fall 2006, UVM’s undergraduate ALANA population increased by 86 percent to 612 students.
“Our partnership with UVM and the JetBlue connection has opened a door to a world that the students of Christopher Columbus High School would never have had access to,” says CCHS principal Lisa Fuentes. “The Vermont experience has been life-altering for these young adults and their families.”
The Christopher Columbus partnership attracted considerable attention in higher education and the media, including a front-page story in The New York Times, and earned the Outstanding High School-College Partnership Award from the New England Board of Higher Education. Fortunately for UVM, the program also caught the eye of Alex Wilcox ’94, then working as director of business development for New York’s hometown airline, JetBlue Airways.
Wilcox, Student Government Association president during his UVM days, was impressed by the University's creative approach to broadening diversity and saw an opportunity to help it along. Contributing in meaningful ways to the communities it serves has been a part of the JetBlue culture from its inception. With destinations in both Burlington, Vermont, and New York City, JetBlue would be able to contribute to both communities by supporting the Christopher Columbus partnerships, he reasoned. Wilcox took his idea to his colleagues and David Neeleman, then chairman and CEO of JetBlue, and the company responded with a commitment to provide free transportation for UVM faculty and admissions staff to travel to CCHS on a regular basis and to bring CCHS students to Burlington to visit the campus.
JetBlue’s leadership was so impressed with the CCHS partnership and the caliber of the Burlington-Bronx connection that the company also made a commitment to contribute $50,000 annually in scholarship support for CCHS students choosing to attend UVM.
An Environmental Leader
When the University of Vermont launched the public phase of The Campaign for the University of Vermont in the fall of 2003, the air of excitement surrounding the occasion was magnified by the news of another milestone in the life of the University—a $15 million gift from Stephen ’61 and Beverly Rubenstein and their family that is the largest individual gift in UVM history.
The Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources thus became the first-ever named academic unit at the University of Vermont and one of only a handful with an environmental focus in the country and even the world. “This gift will propel our school even further in the national spotlight of environmental and natural resource programs,” Dean Donald DeHayes said at the time, and so indeed it has.
DeHayes says the Rubenstein gift has had an “extraordinary impact” in elevating the visibility of the school and its reputation throughout academia. “The context of a named school sends a strong message about quality and prestige,” he says, citing the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences at Duke University, the Donald Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at UC-Santa Barbara, and the Warner College of Natural Resources at Colorado State University as academic entities that carry a similar caché.
Both enrollment and fundraising for the school have benefited as well, with enrollment in the Rubenstein School on a steady upward trajectory, the SAT profiles of entering students among the highest at the University, and research funding and private giving at record levels. “It really matters when you’re a named school,” says DeHayes. “There are other factors at play too, of course, but the Rubenstein gift was a catalyst for all of these positives in the past several years.”
When the income from the Rubenstein gift is fully realized, it will be used to benefit both students and faculty. Twenty-five percent will be designated to support the study of the environment campus-wide and will be used as scholarships for UVM students in environmental majors, both in the Rubenstein School and in other UVM schools and colleges. “That’s the equivalent of a $3.75 million endowment just to support scholarships for environmental students,” DeHayes says. Faculty support from the gift will include opportunities for faculty to explore new areas of their teaching, research, and scholarship.
Stephen Rubenstein, who is president of Rubenstein Properties in New Jersey and a member of the Rubenstein School’s Board of Advisors, says the gift from his family stems from their wish to help UVM further its environmental agenda. “I hope that through research and education, the University of Vermont can be a national leader in finding ways to remedy damage to the environment, and to develop future leaders who will stop such damage from happening in the first place,” he has said.
The generosity of the Rubenstein family, who also provided major support the Stephen and Beverly Rubenstein Ecosystem Science Laboratory on the Burlington waterfront, has not been lost on the students who benefit. DeHayes recalls a moment at Commencement in 2004 when Stephen Rubenstein rose to receive an honorary degree. “The graduating class from the Rubenstein School, which had been named just a few months before, without any prompting from me or anybody else, came to their feet and gave him a standing ovation. It brought tears to the eyes of everybody on the podium and said so much about what his philanthropy meant to the students.”
Photo by Flynn Larsen
Wall Street Smarts
Since the spring of 2003, Professor James Gatti of the UVM School of Business Administration has taken students in his Honors Seminar in Finance on a trip they’ll never forget: an excursion into the inner circle of the investment banking community for a rigorous immersion in the world of high finance.
The honors seminar draws on the experience of UVM alumni who have found their way to the executive suites of some of the largest banking and investment firms in the world. Gatti takes his students on several trips each year to meet with the alumni at their respective institutions to acclimate them to the role and methods of the investment analyst. At the end of the semester they’re given a real-world investment decision to analyze and put on the “hot seat” to defend their analyses and recommendations before a panel of the seasoned investment pros.
“We spent three intense months analyzing companies, learning about debt markets and risk assessment, and then putting it all together in our presentation,” says James Keller, Jr., ’03, an analyst with the hedge fund Thermopolis Partners LLC, based in Jackson, Wyoming. “It was an amazing experience.”
Keller’s parents, James R. Keller, Sr. ’72 and his wife Judith were also impressed—enough so that they made a $2.3 million Campaign gift to create the Keller Family Fund for Honors Preparation in Finance to endow Professor Gatti’s Honors Seminar in Finance and expand the activities of the student-run Finance and Investment Club.
The senior Keller credits UVM for providing solid preparation for his own career—”I’ve always looked at UVM as a kind of launching point,” he says. Keller recently retired after spending more than thirty years as an executive with Weyerhaeuser Company. Keller says he and Judith were very impressed by the quality of the curriculum and facilities available to their son and excited at the direction UVM is taking. “We wanted to be able to contribute to its future success with something that will make the student experience even richer,” he says.
“Enormously beneficial” is how Professor Gatti describes the Kellers’ gift. “Without this gift, it’s fair to say that the Honors Seminar would not exist as it does today. This is the kind of academic luxury we simply wouldn’t be able to afford without alumni support.”
Gatti says the endowment ensures that he is able to conduct the Honors Seminar the way it will be most beneficial to the students, and that feedback from graduates of the program indicates they believe the experience helped them in launching their careers. “Some students tell us that their first job was actually easier than the honors experience,” he says. “My hope is that as students look back on their experience and its impact on their careers, they’ll want to support us as well.”
Valuing Nature
Breathe in. The air is free. But we’d all agree it’s not worthless. So, what’s the price tag on benefits provided by nature?
In 1997, the University of Vermont’s Robert Costanza and his co-authors put the answer at $33 trillion in a now-famous paper in the journal Nature. In the decade following, the science of “ecosystem services” has bloomed. This young discipline studies how nature—through climate regulation, soil formation, crop pollination, flood protection, and so on—supports human welfare, and estimates its value in economic terms.
At the forefront of this new field is UVM’s Gund Institute for Ecological Economics, directed by Costanza, and made possible by a $7.5 million gift from Lulie and Gordon Gund of Princeton, N.J., and their sons, Grant ’91 and Zachary ’93.
“The environment is not a luxury good,” Costanza says, “It’s a productive asset we have to steward and protect just like we would our factories, or our bodies and our health, and everything else that contributes to our well-being.”
The Gund Institute has been able to draw together a remarkable group of more than twenty ecologists, economists, atmospheric scientists, inventors, agriculturists, conservation biologists, and policy experts to “reframe the issue away from a confrontational debate about the environment versus the economy and toward a shared question,” Costanza says, “How do we manage our common assets and our private assets in the most sustainable way—a way that maximizes quality of life?”
At heart of the Gund Institute’s exploration of this question has been rigorous transdisciplinary education. “We’re deliberately blurring the lines between research, teaching, and service,” Costanza says. This blurring often comes in the form of a problem-based course, or “atelier” (from the French for an artist’s workshop), that explodes the conventional understanding of what happens in a course.
“Without some sort of real problem to work on, it’s difficult to create transdisciplinary integration,” Costanza says. “If you say ‘okay, were going to have an interdisciplinary course on ecology and economics let’s have some ecologist come and give a few lectures and some economist come and talk about economics for a few lectures, it doesn’t really help.”
But “if economists and ecologists and stakeholders from the community and others sit together for a semester, or a short course,” he says, “and work in the field to try to actually solve a current problem and then publish the results — while involving students in that solution — we find ways to really move forward.
“The bottom line is we’re having an influence inside the University as well as connecting the University with the community and helping to change policy and changing the way people think about the economy and the environment,” Costanza says. “The gift from the Gund family has allowed us to create an institute that can vigorously do all these kinds of work.”
The Lintilhacs’ Challenge
As a part of their Campaign giving, Crea G’78 and Philip Lintilhac ’63 wanted to do something that would encourage others to give, as well. Their gift of $1 million established the Lintilhac Foundation Challenge Gift Program, a creative philanthropic vehicle that had a powerful multiplier effect throughout the Campaign.
The Lintilhac Challenge boosted the creation of named, endowed scholarships, a well-established way of providing a stable source of scholarship funding in perpetuity and at the same time honoring a donor or other person of the donor's choosing. Though at UVM the minimum threshold to endow a named scholarship is $100,000, the Lintilhac Challenge made it possible for a donor to establish such a scholarship with a minimum gift of $67,000, with the balance drawn from the Lintilhacs’ $1 million challenge pool.
The response from the UVM donor community was exceptional, with twenty-four new endowed scholarships created over the course of the Campaign, totaling some $2 million above and beyond the initial Lintilhac gift.
“The heartwarming response to our challenge, and the speed with which it played out, speak to the depth of the need for these scholarships and also to the breadth of support in the community which rose to the surface as a result,” says Philip Lintilhac. “It is enormously gratifying to see such a broad response to this call for named scholarships. We need more!”
Scholarships Created through the Lintilhac Foundation Challenge Gift Program
The Abraham Family Scholarship Fund established by J. Richard Abraham III ’77 and his wife Carolyn Hess Abraham provides merit scholarships to the most talented students admitted to the Honors College at the University of Vermont.
The Benjamin J. Altschuler Scholarship Fund established by Robin P’03 and Steven Altschuler P’03 to provide annual scholarship assistance to one or more students with financial need in the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources.
The Bain Family Endowed Scholarship Fund established by Samuel E. Bain, Jr. ’68 and Janet Gordon Bain ’69 to provide annual scholarship assistance to one or more undergraduate students in the School of Business Administration and to one or more undergraduate or graduate students in the College of Nursing and Health Sciences.
The Beitzel Family Endowed Scholarship Fund established by Skip Beitzel ’76, Tish Vredenburgh ’77 and David Beitzel ’80 to provide annual scholarship assistance to one or more students at the discretion of the Office of Financial Aid.
The Chuck and Wendy Black Endowed Scholarship Fund established by Charles 0. Black, Jr. ’82 and Wendy Merrill Black ’83 to provide access to deserving students to the same UVM education they enjoyed, with annual scholarship support for out-of-state students who are enrolled or are enrolling in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences or the College of Arts and Sciences, with a preference for Boston-area students.
The Blittersdorf Scholarship Fund established by the Jan ’84, P’11 and David ’81, P’11 Blittersdorf Foundation, Inc. to provide annual scholarship assistance based on merit to Vermont students who are studying environmental sustainability.
The Breazzano Family Endowed Scholarship Fund established by David Breazzano P’09 to provide annual scholarship assistance to one or more students in the College of Arts and Sciences.
The Brennan Family Endowed Scholarship Fund established by Robert P. Brennan, Jr. ’83 and Carolyn Curry Brennan ’82 to provide annual scholarship assistance based on merit to one or more of the most talented students admitted to the Honors College at the University of Vermont.
The Gordie Burke Memorial Scholarship Fund established by Al Purcell ’53 to honor the memory of Gordie Burke by providing annual scholarship assistance to one or more students with financial need and an interest in teaching, and who are the first in their family to attend a college or university, with preference given to residents of the State of Vermont.
The Cotter Scholarship Fund established by Robert P’09 and Susan Cotter P’09 to provide annual scholarship assistance based on need and merit to students who are studying within the College of Arts and Sciences.
The Donald H. DeHayes Multicultural Scholarship Fund established by an anonymous donor to provide annual scholarship assistance to one or more full-time undergraduate or graduate students enrolled in The Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, with consideration of the student's academic ability, financial need, commitment to a career in the environment and natural resources, and propensity to advance the University’s goal of creating a diverse community; preference may be given to inner-city students and students from a partner school, The High School for Environmental Studies in New York City.
The Dickerman Endowed Scholarship Fund established by Fred Dickerman, Jr. ’59 and lnge Brodersen Dickerman ’58 shall be used to provide scholarship assistance based on the University’s highest priorities.
The John Frank Endowed Scholarship Fund established by John Frank ’79 to provide annual scholarship assistance to one or more students, with a preference for students who are pursuing a degree in Business Administration.
The Hundal Family Scholarship Fund established by Dr. Mahendra Hundal to provide annual scholarship assistance based on merit to one or more students pursuing a degree in mechanical engineering.
The Karen and Eric Jacober Fund established by Bernie Taradash P’89,’06,’10 to provide annual scholarship assistance to one or more students with first preference given to students who are residents of, or attend high school in Rhode Island and second preference to students who are residents of other New England States.
The Norma Charest Konafel, ’44, Scholarship Fund established by Norma Charest Konafel ’44, to give back to the University of Vermont for providing scholarships which allowed her to continue her higher education and to ensure a bright future for future students with financial need.
The Helen Malako Livak Scholarship Fund established by Frank H. Livak ’41 to honor the memory of his mother Helen Malako Livak and to provide annual scholarship assistance to student-athletes in track and field and cross-country.
The Mildred Skuba Livak Endowed Scholarship Fund established by Frank Livak ’41 to honor the memory of his wife Mildred Skuba Livak and to provide scholarship support for UVM undergraduate students.
The Valerie Ann Moore Scholarship Fund established by Joey McNabb, Jackie and Samuel Moore and the friends and family of Dr. Moore to provide annual scholarship assistance to undergraduate students in partnerships established by the University with urban high schools.
The Col. Carroll A. “Bud” Ockert ’57 and Genevieve Hess Ockert Scholarship Fund established by Bud Ockert ’57 and Genevieve Hess Ockert to provide annual athletic scholarship assistance to UVM athletes from Vermont.
The William & Laurie Shean Endowed Scholarship Fund established by William Shean ’79 and Laurie Shean ’80 to provide annual scholarship assistance to one or more student-athletes in the Men’s Basketball program and to one or more student-athletes in the Women’s Basketball program.
John W. Wright Jr. Endowed Scholarship Fund established by Martha 0. Wright ’89 to honor the memory of John W. Wright Jr. ’89 who perished in the World Trade Center tragedy on September 11, 2001, by providing annual scholarship assistance to one or more students who are enrolled in the College of Arts and Sciences.
In addition, two new scholarship funds were established by anonymous donors.
(for UVM staff)