When Anne Symonds, ’75, ’78, was in her late teens, a small bridge collapsed outside her family’s vacation home in Alpental. Her family didn’t need to call an engineer; Anne and her brother, Clyde Crawford III, ’70, redesigned and rebuilt the bridge. For the Crawford family, these types of engineering feats were a rite of passage. “None of us was afraid of tackling a project because Dad wasn’t afraid. He’d just figure out how to do something and do it,” says Anne about her father, Clyde Crawford, ’42, who, along with her mother, Ursula, ’43, had built the vacation home.
Ursula, an English major, and Clyde, an engineer who had studied chemistry at the UW, encouraged their three children to pursue engineering. Anne, Clyde and Bruce Crawford, ’80, are all College of Engineering graduates who have had successful engineering careers. Their parents saw engineering as a route to becoming self-sufficient, contributing to society, and becoming better problem-solvers.
Clyde and Ursula, acting on their strong belief that education should be readily accessible to more students, established the Clyde L. and Ursula A. Crawford Endowed Scholarship Fund in the College of Engineering. Their children recently followed their parents’ example by establishing the Crawford Family Endowed Scholarship in the College of Engineering to honor their parents and expand their vision.
“We hope this scholarship will make it possible for students to focus on their studies,” says Clyde Crawford III. “And we hope a lot of smart people, some of whom might not otherwise have had the chance, will become engineers.”
The Crawford Family’s gift qualifies for matching funds from the UW as part of the Students First scholarship matching initiative. For more on Students First, visit www.uwfoundation.org/studentsfirst.