Future’s so bright, thanks to Campaign UW

At top: There’s no brighter star in the UW firmament than Jim Banks—a College of Education faculty member since 1969, the founder of the Center for Multicultural Education and the influential author of more than 20 books. Banks grew up in the Jim Crow South, and the images of happy slaves in his social studies textbooks got him thinking about the power—positive or negative—held by those who write history. He has dedicated his life to the creation of more diverse curricula. Banks was a perfect fit for a new chair in diversity studies that Linda and Kerry Killinger endowed in 2006.

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Betty Wagner, ’51, was appointed head of the Architecture and Urban Planning Library in 1951 and remained there until her retirement in 2004. Her recent gifts to her longtime employer include money to preserve and catalog the drawings of Seattle modernist architect Roland Terry. “The UW Libraries has been collecting architectural drawings for many years, but has lacked funds to adequately care for its collection,” she says. “I spent 53 years at the AUP Library, so I know the value of such drawings in researching local architectural history.”

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“The military made me realize that I wanted more school,” says Richard Price, ’08, a veteran of wars in Bosnia and Iraq. “It was too many deployments.” A Donna Sakson Endowed Scholarship helped Price earn a technical communications degree from the College of Engineering and an internship at the Port of Tacoma, where he wrote security policy. In August, he would’ve shipped out for another tour of duty in Iraq. Instead, he started a job with the Federal Aviation Administration.

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Much of what we know about the brains of babies we know thanks to Andy Meltzoff and Pat Kuhl of the UW’s Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences. The UW nearly lost the husband-and-wife team to another institution this past spring. But a $4 million grant from the Washington State Life Sciences Discovery Fund, plus about $2.2 million from private donors, persuaded them to stay. The money will pay for a groundbreaking new Child Brain Imaging Center, the first in the nation.

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Brianna McGrath (right) has been a donor to the UW for five years—and she’s only 8. Every time she shakes out her piggybank, she sets aside some money for the Chambe Dance Company, the UW’s six-member professional dance company-in-residence. Her sister Zoe, 6, began following suit last year. Dancers themselves, they are proud to be helping expose more people to the art—and they like seeing their names in the Dance Program newsletter.

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Donors gave $20 million to renovate the Conibear Shellhouse, which reopened in 2005. Upgrades include a 75 percent space increase, new training rooms, locker rooms and offices, a new shell storage bay, and the crown jewel, the Ackerley Academic Center, where more than 300 student-athletes receive tutoring each quarter. Crew coaches say the new facility helped usher in the UW’s recent dominance of the sport. The 2009 women’s team will include from left, Sarah Martin, Lauren Bresnahan, Isabelle Woodward, and returning national champions Adrienne Martelli and Rachel Powers.

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A scholarship freed LeRoy Horton III, ’07, to do volunteer work with disadvantaged youth while earning his doctorate from the UW School of Dentistry. “I was in the same boat when I was younger,” he says, “coming from a disadvantaged background, not having much guidance—so I felt the responsibility to open up doors that I came through.” Horton is a first-generation college graduate, and his income as a practicing dentist helps him support his extended family, as well as his three children, Janell Sparks, Jordyn Horton (on his arm), and LeRoy Horton IV (in his arms).

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Floyd Jones, ’54, and his wife, Delores, ’50, shared a love of the theater, and a belief in its importance as an agent of social justice. Shortly after Delores’ death in 2005, Jones decided to honor her with a $2 million gift to help restore the deteriorating Playhouse Theater on University Way, home to most productions for the UW’s prestigious School of Drama. Its grand reopening is scheduled for the fall of 2009.

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In 1949, an old bell tower on the north end of campus burned to the ground. That same year, the building now known as Gerberding Hall was built—complete with an empty belfry. But it would take nearly six decades, and Gordon Stuart Peek’s generosity, for the ringing to resume at the UW. Peek’s gift of eight bells, each inscribed with a family member’s name, was installed in Gerberding this spring. It’s the only set of “change-ringing” bells west of Abilene, Texas.