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Donors Making A Difference
Chelsea Hertzog '07, received one of four Heather Nikkel-Lampe scholarships this year.
Every day, donors to the College of Letters and Science make a difference in the college's students, programs, research and instruction. The stories in these pages are just a few of the many ways that donors have a true impact on the college and UC Davis.
Ross Lampe and Mark Muro (BA, History '85, JD '88) from the law firm Muro & Lampe have donated $10,000 to create a scholarship fund for the College of Letters and Science. The scholarship was awarded to four students who have persevered in their education through difficult circumstances. The scholarship honors Ross Lampe's late wife, Heather Nikkel-Lampe, who graduated in 2001 with a BA in history and a minor in education after a long struggle to finish school while battling a long-term illness, which eventually took her life prematurely.
Of the 40 applications for this scholarship, the committee chose four students to receive the scholarships totaling nearly $2,500 each. Recipients Victoria Shao (undeclared in the Division of Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies), James H. Baker, Jr. (Political Science), and Trevor Shanklin-Badoni (History), are all incoming freshman. Chelsea Hertzog (Mathematics, Philosophy) will be a senior this year.
Hertzog, who is battling a painful neurological disorder that can cause her to have seizure-like episodes, was recovering from a severe kidney infection when she received the news of her scholarship.
"The news of receiving this scholarship really cheered me up while I was in the hospital," she said. "I am on full financial aid at UC Davis. I know the importance of money and I wouldn't have been able to go to college without the generosity of people like Mr. Lampe and Mr. Muro."
Hertzog has forged a difficult road throughout her career at UC Davis, balancing the challenges of being in a wheelchair while possessing a passion to learn and help others. In her second year at UC Davis, she volunteered at student-run health clinics for the underserved, uninsured populations in the Sacramento area. After serving as a committee head for the Clinica Tepati, a student-run health clinic in Sacramento that serves hundreds of uninsured patients who would otherwise go without health care, she now wants to go into medicine when she graduates from UC Davis this year.
"I know what Heather Nikkel-Lampe went through with her illness, but she had a determination to finish school and she had a tremendous love for her family," Hertzog said. "The students who receive this scholarship will assure that her perseverance and love will live on. This scholarship made her life a real legacy."
The UC Davis Symphony received a major boost to its program thanks to a gift from Don McNary. Don surprised his wife Lou, who was a former cellist in the symphony, with a permanent endowed seat in the orchestra.
The Tyco Electronics Foundation donated $50,000 to continue its fellowship in functional materials/nanoscience research for the third year. (Tyco has donated $150,000 total.) The gift supports summer stipends for up to eight students provides much-needed research funding to continue this cutting-edge research. One of the past fellowship recipients, Stephanie Gravano (Ph.D. '06), is now working for Tyco full-time.
Joan Sallee and other donors have established the G. Thomas Sallee Mathematics Teaching Endowment with a $14,000 gift to honor the distinguished 40-year career of mathematics professor Tom Sallee. During his career at UC Davis, Sallee established the Math Project that shares cutting-edge methods of teaching mathematics. The endowment provides an annual award to a mathematics instructor who is elected as the best teacher of lower-division mathematics.
Joseph and Eda Pell's foundation gave $25,000 to the Program in Jewish Studies for the third year in a row, supporting courses teaching the history of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. Both Pells are Holocaust survivors, and Joseph Pell wrote a book about his escape from the Warsaw ghetto in Poland. Previous donations from the Pells have enabled well-known scholars on anti-Semitism to give lectures at UC Davis.
The Physical Sciences and Engineering Library received a valuable endowment from Marilyn Bottini and her family. Named after the late chemistry professor Albert Bottini, the Albert Bottini Chemistry Collection Endowment will enable the library to have a perpetual source of funding for chemistry information resources. Additionally, the Bottini family donated funds that have been used to purchase large, specialized chemistry encyclopedias that they could not afford with their regular collections budget.
The Young Society welcomed four new members this spring, adding to the record number of Young Society members that the College of Letters & Science had this fiscal year (a total of 85 members giving $156,600). The funds donated by Young Society members go to the areas that are most in need for each division. A summary of how the 2005-06 funds impacted the college will be reported in the next issue of the magazine.
The new members are: