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OHIO UNIVERSITY is students, faculty and staff, programs and facilities, alumni and friends. It’s a singular experience.
Gifts to OHIO make a difference every day. Scholarships inspire students to become their best selves. Program and faculty support engages scholars in research and creative pursuits. Support for facilities transforms campuses.Community outreach brings the OHIO spirit to life.
2016 Annual Report on Giving provides snapshots of the impact donors have at OHIO. In fiscal year 2016 (July 1, 2015–June 30, 2016) 20,000 donors committed more than $30 million to support OHIO students, faculty, programs, and more. (For the charts and graphs that illustrate the numbers, click here.)
Thank you! This is what making a difference looks like.
Scholarships provide students on all of OHIO’s campuses with the financial, and moral, support they need to succeed and to achieve their dreams of a college education. Your gifts make bright futures.
Tyler Zwahlen (BS ’16) feels a connection with the couple whose scholarship helped him earn his undergraduate degree from Ohio University. Even though William C. and Mildred K. Lehman established the scholarship in 1998, when Tyler was just five-years-old, and both had passed away by the time he started middle school.
The Lehmans were born and raised in Hocking County, just like Tyler’s grandmother. “William was an electrician, and I come from a family of electricians including my great grandfather, grandfather, dad, and my two uncles,” Tyler said. “If I could sit down with (William Lehman), I would tell him how thankful I was that he wanted to help young people improve their lives through higher education.”
Tyler is working toward his master of physician assistant practice on OHIO’s Dublin Campus. “It is my ultimate goal to be able to give back to the community in which I have lived all my life,” he said. “Receiving this [undergraduate] scholarship was such a blessing, and I am forever grateful that I was chosen.”
The Lehman Scholarship is one of four charitable trusts – collectively totaling more than $5.1 million – that trustee William J. Sitterley and his wife Sally, trust administrator, transferred to The Ohio University Foundation in February 2016. The Sitterleys had held these funds in trust for decades, distributing nearly $2.9 million in scholarship support and helping hundreds of students go to college.
Now held within The Foundation’s endowment, the scholarships will support Fairfield and Hocking County students attending OHIO and continue these families’ legacies. Each has its own story and celebrates a family’s connection to the region’s past and its future.
Siblings Paul Bader and Ruth Bader lived in Liberty Township on a family farm near Baltimore, Ohio. The Paul I. Bader and Ruth E. Bader Scholarship benefits students from Liberty Union High School.
Mildred Herzberger and her husband, Carl, a career officer in the U.S. Army, lived frugally. The Mildred L. Herzberger Scholarship supports Fairfield County students.
Alice Kindler was a master teacher who taught piano to countless Fairfield County children. Her scholarship benefits Fairfield County students.
The Lehmans were married in 1963. Neither had the opportunity to attend college, and the couple had no children. Their scholarship supports Hocking and Fairfield County students.
Innovative spaces provide students, faculty, staff, and all OHIO visitors with the environments and the tools necessary for learning, discovery, and collaboration. Your gifts build great spaces.
“Back in the day when I started in corporate America, you had your office, you closed your door, you worked quietly,” says Tammy Reynolds, the college’s executive-in-residence of management and co-founder of OHIO Women in Business. “That is not today. Today is all about open space. It’s about collaboration.”
The Phil (BSCO ’62) and Pat Muck Business Annex at Ohio University’s College of Business, which opened in fall 2016, provides this inspiring environment for the college’s students. The Annex’s 15,000-net assignable-square-feet includes four floors, five flexible work spaces, nine break out rooms, and cutting-edge technology that connects students to the world.
“Students need flexible meeting spaces because none of the work is actually done in the classroom,” says Kyle Pratt, sports management and business analytics major.
“It’s really created this living/learning environment for our students,” says Heather Lawrence, academic director of graduate programs and the Robert H. Freeman Professor of Business in the College of Business. “It’s amazing what a physical space transformation can do for our entire program. Over the last few months we’ve already started to talk about how to grow our programs, how to make everything we’re doing more student-centered.”
College of Business Dean Hugh Sherman says the space supports students as they collaborate and explore the range of ways they can make an impact on the world.
“We’re trying to help students to discover what they want to do, what they are passionate about and, then, help them to pursue those careers.”
Visiting professors and professionals like Beverly Jones, BSJ ’69, MBA ’75, mentor and inspire students – and faculty and staff. They change the course of careers and lives. Your gifts develop leaders.
“He wasn’t flashy or charismatic … as a professor he was excellent. I took every class he taught,” said Marty. “I went to visit him for advice, especially when I was in a dilemma about what I was going to do with my degree. He was one of the first people to mentor me.”
With his mentor’s and another professor’s advice, Wall began his career with the federal government, which led to a 37-year career in association management in 1978.
“I had a really nice career,” said Marty, who retired as executive director of the Association of Schools and Colleges of Optometry in 2015. “Association management is not a well-known profession. People tend to fall into it from different areas.”
Wall’s gifts to OHIO reflect a commitment to his profession and to mentorship. In 1973 he started making annual gifts, which continue today. In 1994, he made his first gift to an endowed fund, in Gusteson’s name.
“I started giving modest annual contributions to (the Gusteson Library Endowment), in honor of a faculty member I really liked,” said Marty.
In 2016, Wall chose to leave a legacy to help future Bobcats encounter mentors who, like Gusteson, change lives.
“If you sit down and start thinking about what is important to you – your values, the experiences that meant a lot to you – it’s a viable choice to impact students and your areas of interest,” said Marty. “Supporting my profession and others who would go into this career is important to me. So is doing something for the future and leaving a mark.”
The professorship will give future generations access to career-shaping mentors.
“The professorship affords the Voinovich School unique opportunities to bring national experts to campus and make a positive influence in this critical leadership area,” said Mark Weinberg, founding dean of the Voinovich School. “The education and mentoring our students will receive as well as the benefit to our communities is invaluable, and we thank Mr. Wall for his continued commitment to these efforts.”
Marty shares Mark’s enthusiasm. “Hopefully, the professorship will be a breakthrough for the Voinovich School, which didn’t exist when I was a student,” he said. “Giving through your will is on a different level, you have to put a lot of faith in the future.”
Like mentors putting faith in mentees.
OHIO encounters the arts across its campuses. The Performing Arts Series gives students real-world theater experience and audiences nationally-acclaimed performances. Your gifts foster creativity.
OHIO’s Performing Arts Series has entertained and challenged audiences since 1959. From Memorial Auditorium, musicians, dancers, and actors have connected with hundreds-of-thousands of OHIO students, faculty and staff, and members of the Athens community.
University officials established the Series after being approached by Athens community members hoping for more cultural programming. “The Series provides memorable experiences for audiences to embrace the arts of the past as well as the arts of today,” said Char Kopchick, assistant dean of students.
A sentiment shared by Jeffrey (Jeff) Chaddock (BSC ’88), a lifelong Appalachian Ohio resident.
“In order to truly be the ‘Harvard on the Hocking,’ enriching the lives of students, faculty, and local residents through first-class performances is vital,” said Jeff. “If Boston is to Harvard as Athens is to Ohio University, then the arts need to rival the Red Socks in terms of first-rate quality of life!”
He’s not alone. In support of the arts, 454 donors have committed $485,886 to the Performing Arts Series Fund over the years. The first gift coming in 1979.
2016 broke records for the Fund, with $97,983 in gifts and commitments. The largest benefactors: Jeff and his partner Mark Morrow, who committed $75,000 ($15,000 a year for five years). The pair has given $183,000 to the Fund since 2003.
“The impact of giving to the arts of southeastern Ohio has strong dividends for both Mark and I because contributions to the arts have a major impact on the programing and the quality provided,” said Jeff, who loves “underdog” areas of philanthropy.
“There’s no question that we love areas that often are overlooked,” he said. “Supporting performing arts or arts facilities can be more difficult for donors to understand than things like athletics. And, when they are supported, often it is by ‘lots of people, with little bits of money.’”
Thinking beyond 2020, Jeff and Mark also committed $1.5 million through their will to establish a permanent Performing Arts Series Endowment, providing significant annual support for the Series for future generations.
“As Mark and I thought about what we’d like our legacy to be after we’re gone, we knew we wanted it to honor the things that were most important to us during our lifetimes,” said Jeff.
His mission: to inspire others to plan gifts like these earlier in their lifetimes. “We work hard, and we succeed in life. What’s next? It became very exciting for us to consider the possibilities and to do something for organizations that we’re extremely passionate about and to carry on our legacy after we’re gone.”