Year-End Giving

As I have spending all my time grading quizzes and labs, and writing and grading finals I have been listening to the local public radio station and checking e-mail to break the grading up.  In the course of this I keep hearing and reading multiple appeals for year-end giving.

A recent seminar speaker colleague from a California public university told of his university's plan to take $100 per key from the department for every key not returned by a student when they graduate.  Since the department has no state provided operating budget this means that the money will come from money brought in from summer offerings, grant overhead, and donations to the department.  While I encourage giving to your alma mater, you probably don't expect it to go to gauging by the campus key shop.

Particularly for those of us from PUI/MCU institutions we owe much to our alma maters.  So how do we give and make sure our giving goes to help bring up the next generation of chemists?

I suggest giving directly to the department of your choice, or to the faculty member of your choice by attaching a letter to your check which designates the uses to which the money may go.

When I give to my alma mater I designate that the funds must go to the corpus of the Synthetic Organic Chemistry Research fund they set up some years ago.  Giving to the corpus builds the perpetual nature of the fund, so my dollars continue to give long after I am gone.

If there was no fund I would do as the Friends of the Hall Group do and designate that the funds may be used to support the purchase of materials needed to advance the laboratory research and teaching program of a specific professor or group of professors.  In my case I use these funds to cover outside analysis costs, purchase of reagents, travel by students to present their work, printing of posters, student scholarships, and other such things.

So, as you plan your year end giving you might consider support the work of your mentor, who has seen support from the university for his research program slashed over the last couple of years.

T.S. Hall