2022
CLARK HONORS COLLEGE [INSERT TITLE]
TABLE OF CONTENTS 01
Invest in the CHC
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Robert Ousterhout
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EJI Fellows
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IFP & RFP
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Julie Tripp
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Surprise Gift
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Your section titles go here
Your NFP Name SDG Progress Report 2020
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Much of what we do at Clark Honors College would not be possible without the support of generous alumni and friends. With those
"Our gifts will ensure
contributions, we can provide an intimate learning environment with an average of 15
that students for
students per class. We can recruit and retain
generations to come can
first-generation college students and transfer
learn and grow in this
students who may require additional support. We can provide unique courses that
special program that has
take students outside of the classroom and
so enriched our lives!"
offer experiential learning that enhances career readiness.
—Amy Kari, BA '82, CHC Alumni Advisory Council
These opportunities are the hallmark of the CHC experience, but require investments of time and resources to fully succeed. Your support makes it feasible to reinforce our commitment to deliver these possibilities to each successive generation of students.
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INVEST IN THE CHC
COMING TOGETHER AS A COMMUNITY
INVEST IN THE CHC
ACCESS IS EVERYTHING
Clark Honors College provides a top-tier education at a public university price. While
Catch your reader's eye by highlighting one
many incoming CHC students receive need or merit-based scholarships, a significant number of highly qualified applicants are unable to join us each year due to financial barriers. We can do better. With your help, we can
of your main
make a first-rate public education a reality
points in this
gift to the Clark Honors College Scholarship
space.
for a more diverse range of students. Your Fund helps cover the expense of differential tuition, roughly $3,000 every year, for students in need of support.
Your NFP Name SDG Progress Report 2020
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"The Clark Honors College pushed me to ask new questions, challenge assumptions, and venture down new paths. Now more than ever, we need curious and innovative people in the world -- the CHC is doing it's part to help meet that need." — Kevin Frazier, BS 2015
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INVEST IN THE CHC
WHAT OUR ALUMNI ARE SAYING
Employers tell us they plan to hire students who have participated in experiential learning opportunities such as research assistantships, internships, mentorships and study abroad. The skills students gain during these experiences teach them to overcome obstacles and communicate effectively in our diverse, cross-cultural, and global world. CHC is strengthening our ability to provide research assistantships and internship funding that will help our students gain these skills through the recently launched Internship Funding Program (IFP) and Mentored Research Program (MRP). Experiential learning opportunities take the student experience to the next level, ensuring not only that our graduates leave with a solid liberal arts education under their feet, but also with real life experiences that will give them a head start when they embark on the next leg of their journey. Our goal is for every Clark Honors College student to graduate with at least one experiential learning opportunity on their resume. We have found that 92% of CHC students pursue part or full-time work while in school. On average, only 50% of this work relates to their career interests. Donor investment ensures that more students can pursue mentored research, internships, and study abroad experiences that effectively support their future career ambitions. Please consider a gift to the CHC Dean’s Innovation Fund to support these experiential learning opportunities.
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INVEST IN THE CHC
HANDS-ON EXPERIENCE MAKES THE DIFFERENCE
Alison Gash joined the Clark Honors College in 2021 as a Faculty-in-Residence. She is an Associate Professor of Political Science and her work explores how U.S. public policy and law alter opportunities for minoritized communities. She has a background in fair housing litigation and workforce development policy that she references in the classroom (with not-so-secret aspirations to inspire her students to consider careers in public policy). She received the 2020 UO Herman Award for Specialized Pedagogy and the 2019 Martin Luther King, Jr. Service Award. In addition to publishing in scholarly journals, her work has also appeared in public outlets like Politico, Slate, Washington Monthly, Newsweek, Fortune and The Conversation. Professors are an indelible part of an undergraduate education. Your college memories wouldn't be the same if it wasn’t for that favorite professor who challenged, prodded, and supported you. Help us bring the very best faculty to Clark Honors College — and keep them here. You might even consider endowing a chair.
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INVEST IN THE CHC
EXCELLENT FACULTY FOR EXCELLENT STUDENTS
From the internship funding program to our new visiting faculty-in-residence award, the CHC Dean and associate deans provide leadership and a creative vision for the college. The Dean's Innovation Fund is an invaluable resource that can be accessed to respond to emerging needs and take advantage of unexpected opportunities. By investing these funds to be used at the Dean's discretion, you are helping Clark Honors College be agile and able to support our students and faculty when and where they need it most. Contact Alison Pitt, Director of Development for Scholarships and Student Success, if you are interested in building endowed support for this affordability initiative.
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INVEST IN THE CHC
DEAN'S INTITIATIVES
UPENN PROFESSOR AND AUTHOR CREDITS CHC FOR A LIFE-CHANGING EXPERIENCE STORY BY MORNING GLORY RITCHIE PHOTOS COURTESY OF ROBERT OUSTERHOUT As a high school student in small-town Monmouth, Oregon, Robert Ousterhout ’73, felt unchallenged. He found his high school experience lacking and went through those educational years as if he was simply gliding by. But everything changed when he started attending Clark Honors College, and went in the opposite direction. Things were not easy during his initial time at CHC. While high school had been relatively easy, Ousterhout felt behind academically and was apprehensive about succeeding at the university. After a bit of time, however, it became clear that CHC provided the environment he needed to thrive. When he decided to join CHC study groups and attending faculty office hours, he began to feel more academically confident and successful.
- Robert Ousterhout
“I learned just as much from my cohort at the CHC as I did from my professors,” he said. “I had the right kind of instruction that I needed through the honors college.”
“It was like the finishing school I needed,” he explained. A particularly influential class he took in CHC was an English literature course that strengthened his professional writing skills and helped establish him as a reader. He felt as if he was just starting to learn how to learn, as opposed to combining fragmented facts and simply memorizing them. He realized that he was lucky in a setting with the small classes and intellectual classmates.
During his time in CHC, Ousterhout embarked on a study abroad trip to Vienna, Italy which was ultimately life-changing, and was eyeopening to experience another culture. He had never traveled outside of the Pacific Northwest before. When he returned, he declared art history as his major and wrote his honors college thesis on early Italian painting. 7
“Prior to the pandemic, Ousterhout rarely spent a summer in the United States. Instead he studied and documented the rock-cut churches and settlements of Cappadocia which was featured in a television special with Martha Stewart and where he established a summer program for graduate students in medieval studies, archeology, and art history.
Now, Ousterhout has authored numerous publications on Byzantine architecture and monumental art. His recent works include Visualizing the Community: Art Material Culture, and Settlement in Byzantine Cappadocia (2017) and Eastern Medieval Architecture: The Building Traditions of Byzantium and Neighboring Lands (2019). The latter won the 2021 Haskins Medal, awarded by the Medieval Academy of America. Visually stunning, Ousterhout’s books reflect his distinctive approach to scholarship in the field of art history, including how we reflect on and view monumental art as sacred spaces. For example, Ousterhout reflects on the Church of St. Nicholas in New York City, destroyed during the 9/11 NYC attacks and its similarity to Byzantine architecture like the Hagia Sophia.
Viewing scholarship as a creative endeavor, Ousterhout attributes the significant role that his undergraduate study abroad has played in his current work, and the importance of on-site observation as it applies to both his writing and teaching careers. He regularly took graduate students for on-site study in Greece and Turkey. As opposed to only learning about art history in a textbook, Ousterhout feels that taking graduate students into the field where they can come face-to-face with art allows them to approach the work with fresh perspectives, as he did as a CHC undergraduate.
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ROBERT OUSTERHOUT
He later decided to pursue a PhD in art history and to continue in academics and on-site field research in Greece and Cappadocia, Turkey, which continues to excite him as he experiences art by seeing it firsthand.
ROBERT OUSTERHOUT
He still remains in touch with many of his former classmates from CHC. His advice to current and prospective students is to not be afraid to ask for help, and to take advantage of the many resources available to honors college students. He believes that utilizing CHC resources can successfully shape one's path for an entire lifetime, as it did for him. It’s “an opportunity one will never have again,” he added. In 2021, he established the Robert Ousterhout Scholarship Fund, which provides support to CHC students with demonstrated financial need, particularly students majoring in the arts and humanities. With this generous donation, Ousterhout holds doors open for students, enabling them to take advantage of the livechanging opportunities available at CHC. “The more you know, the more questions you have, and the smarter questions they will be,” Ousterhout says. “None of us come from the same background, we come from different experiences.”
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EJI FELLOWS In fall of 2020, on the heels of 100 days of protests around the country and against police violence in Portland, Oregon following the murder of George Floyd in Minnesota, Clark Honors College began to think about how to provide courses that would help CHC students deepen their engagement with the histories and contemporary manifestations of anti-Black racism. Could CHC take advantage of our experiences during the pandemic which showed remote education can be effective and indeed transformative, especially in the small, discussion-based courses offered by the CHC? Just as importantly, could CHC provide meaningful experiences and support to those faculty who might serve as fellows? And would the new position attract additional donor gifts that might make allow this fellowship to continue to address social justice-related themes in the future? The CHC Visiting Fellowship in Equity, Justice, and Inclusion grew out of these conversations. The theme for this inaugural cycle was Black experiences in the United States (if the pilot becomes sustainable, CHC faculty will determine additional themes for two-year cycles). Fellows will teach remote, upper-level colloquia in their area of specialization and facilitate a one-session interdisciplinary CHC seminar for CHC faculty and staff to deepen understandings of the topics beyond student experiences in classrooms When the search committee met in August, they encountered a wonderful problem: Not only had the applicant pool exceeded their expectations for this unprecedented award, but the applicants were such a diverse and exciting group of candidates that the search committee agreed to offer the fellowship to three exceptional candidates, recognizing that all would bring unique strengths to the classes they will lead in CHC next year.
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Dr. Barganier is joining Clark Honors College as a Visiting Fellow in Equity, Justice, and Inclusion from San Francisco State University where he is currently an associate professor in the Department of Criminal Justice Studies. He has served as an assistant professor in the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of WisconsinMilwaukee, a Visiting Associate Professor of Black Educational & Leadership Traditions at the University of Pittsburgh and is an affiliate faculty member of the Black Europe Summer School at the International Institute for Research and Education in Amsterdam. Dr. Barganier recieved his PhD from University of California, Berkeley; his master's degree at the University of Minnesota and a Bachelor of Science degree at Grambling State University.
PROFESSOR GEORGE BARGANIER Professor George Barganier's work centers the knowledge and critical thinking produced by Black people at the farthest margins of subalternity. In doing so, his aim is to unveil a radical political project for envisaging more humane forms of social life. His current project, Fanon’s Children: Panthers, Crips, Bloods and the Black Radical Tradition (under contract, Temple University Press) takes up these tasks through an examination of the everyday efforts of the Crips and Bloods to create a personhood in the face of the violent production of race in Los Angeles. Through this work he seeks to offer a resolution to the Afropessimist dilemma that any affirmation of Blackness simultaneously affirms the dehumanization that configures Black subjectivity itself. Located within the bounds of Blackness, he argues, Black radicalism enunciates a self-affirming, 11
EJI FELLOWS
productive alternative to the Afropessimist impasse and thus offers the potential to transcend the problems of coloniality.
DR. ERIN BRADLEY
Her teaching and research examine social determinants of health as they relate to health equity with the primary aim to develop and evaluate culturally appropriate, multilevel interventions that address social and structural factors that create and/or sustain health disparities. Dr. Bradley's research areas include HIV/STI prevention, perinatal health, healthcare engagement, and safe and affordable housing. Her current research examines the health effects of involuntary residential displacement (gentrification). Her work has been shared with many audiences as an invited speaker, conference presenter, and author, publishing 22 peer-reviewed manuscripts (16 first or second author) stemming from her work in journals such as Health Equity, Journal of Women’s Health, Journal of Racial & Ethnic Health Disparities, and MMWR.
DR. ERIN BRADLEY Visiting Fellow in Equity, Justice, and Inclusion Dr. Erin Bradley (Linda Lentz Hubert Assistant Professor of Public Health, Agnes Scott College, Atlanta) will teach “Health Equity: Social Justice in Health” in Spring 2022 that analyzes social determinants of health and equity that create and sustain health disparities affecting Black populations in the U.S. Dr. Bradley brings a wealth of expertise and experience to this course. As a public health researcher and Linda Lentz Hubert Assistant Professor of Public Health at Agnes Scott College in metropolitan Atlanta, Dr. Bradley is a behavioral scientist by training but most of her work aligns with social epidemiology. She earned a BA in Psychology from Spelman College and an MPH and PhD in Behavioral Sciences and Health Education from Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health. Dr. Bradley also spent three years in the CDC Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention's Office of Health Equity as a postdoctoral research fellow.
Dr. Bradley excels at teaching at all levels. At Agnes Scott College, she earned a reputation for making statistics exciting for students: once a class students dreaded, they now say it’s their most exciting course. Drawing on her own research on Black women and HIV, as well as her work with the CDC on epidemiological modeling, Dr. Bradley models her commitment to race, social justice, and public science in her own communication practices as well as those she teaches her students. When Agnes Scott College pivoted to remote learning, Dr. Bradley was in the middle of teaching a course 12
EJI FELLOWS
Dr. Bradley has a passion for teaching and research and has created synergy between the two during her time at Spelman College, Emory University, and Agnes Scott College. Prior to joining the public health faculty at Agnes Scott in 2019, Dr. Bradley taught and mentored undergraduate and graduate students in research, integrating knowledge and skills gained from nearly 15 years of involvement in NIH or CDC-funded research studies.
Robinson’s forthcoming monograph, Evergreen Ungawa: The Black Student Union of Seattle, the University of Washington, and Washington State University, 1968 to 1970, will be published as part of the Black Power Series of New York University Press (expected Fall 2022). The text re-positions debates about the Civil Rights movements, placing the Pacific Northwest within that framework. His previous publications include “The Black Campus Movement in the Evergreen State: The Black Student Union at the University of Washington and Washington State University, 1967-1969,” in the Pacific Northwest Quarterly 103:2 (Spring 2012): pp. 55-66, and “Black Student Unions to the Gang of Four: Interracial Alliances and Community Organizing from San Francisco to Seattle,” in California History, Vol. 98, No. 2 (Summer 2021), pp. 24–49. He has contributed numerous essays and book reviews in platforms such as Blackpast.org, The Western Journal of Black Studies, Reference Services Review, The Journal of Black Studies, The Journal of African American History, and Race in American Television: Voices and Visions That Shaped a Nation. Robinson earned his doctorate in American Studies from Washington State University in 2012, and a bachelor’s in history from the University of Washington in 2004. Before CSUSB, he was Visiting Assistant Professor of History and Ethnic Studies at Whitworth University from 2016 to 2018, where he was bestowed with the 2017 Provost’s Junior Faculty Award for outstanding teaching and service. His media appearances include NBC Palm Springs, Empire KVCR, Byrdie, and The I.E. Voice. Robinson was born and raised in Seattle, WA.
DR. MARC ARSELL ROBERTSON Dr. Marc Arsell Robinson (assistant professor, History, California State University, San Bernardino), will teach “Black Panthers in the Pacific Northwest” in Fall 2022. Dr. Robinson specializes in aras of U.S. and African American History. Dr. Robinson’s research focuses on black student activism, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Black Power Movement in the Pacific Northwest.
Dr. Robinson has been one of his university’s innovators in remote learning on campus.
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EJI FELLOWS
that included a faculty-led travel component — students were going to travel to Ecuador. Because of her embrace of online teaching and her excellence at it, Dr. Bradley received the Faith Chao ’61 Faculty Excellence Award for her Spring 2020 course and was nominated for the Vulcan Teaching Award for her 2021 course.
MENTORED RESEARCH PROGRAM & INTERNSHIP FUNDING PROGRAM
STORY BY LAUREN CHURCH, CHC COMMUNICATIONS
While traveling, attending summer classes, or working short-term jobs after mid-June are the norm for most students, Clark Honors College junior Allen Donovan spent his break tying tiny, almost invisible knots of nylon thread while looking through a microscope in Dr. Damien Callahan’s lab. With the steadiest of hands, he used these knots to anchor muscle fibers onto analyzation hardware to understand how their function becomes diminished with age. Hailey O’Donnell’s summer months were filled researching the publishing industry with forensic precision with her mentor, Dr. Barbara Mossberg. She scoured publishers, agents, and literary journals searching for avenues not only for her own work, but for the work of young writers who she hopes to promote one day. Carmen Sanchez-Reddick devoted a large portion of her break to the ocean working with deep-sea equipment, sorting larvae with Dr. Craig Young of the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology. She remembers finding her very first larvae as a highlight of that time. “I was super nervous about whether I would spot important larvae in samples that cost millions to obtain, but as I found more and more,” she said, “I felt comfortable with my abilities to sort larvae.”
The experiences of Allen, O’Donnell, and Sanchez-Reddick during the summer were possible due to two new experiential learning programs, the Mentored Research Program and the Internship Funding Program, both launched by CHC last year. In addition to examining deepsea larvae with the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology and using ultrasound technology to gather data on muscles and tendons in the knee, the MRP and IFP also provided students opportunities to identify and brief murder cases with potentially wrongful convictions and catalog historic photographs for preservation by museum archives. Assistant Dean of Advising and Strategic Partnerships led the effort to create these opportunities. She felt that it was important not only to provide additional learning opportunities for students at CHC, but also to expand the college’s platform for career readiness, something the MRP and IFP uniformly offer. With funding from alumni Dr. Ronald C. Fraback, David O’Kelley, and CHC alumni and friends, Raisanen and Interim Dean Carol Stabile helped make these programs become a reality. “The more support we can provide for our students when it comes to job and graduate school applications, the stronger they will be as candidates,” Stabile said.
“The Mentored Research Program and the Internship Funding Program will help to ensure that students don't have to pass up an excellent professional development opportunity for financial reasons,” said CHC’s Assistant Dean of Advising and Strategic Partnerships Elizabeth Raisanen.
MENTORED RESEARCH PROGRAM
The Mentored Research Program offers students the opportunity to partake in paid student-faculty research assistantships where they learn to work independently, manage deadlines and develop valuable research skills. Any CHC student in good academic standing who is not receiving academic credit for their research project is welcome to apply.
In collaboration with their chosen UO faculty mentor, CHC students of any discipline may apply for research funding up to about $1,000 each term. Students and their mentors can reapply to renew their project’s funding for up to three terms, though new mentorship applicants and research proposals are prioritized. Payments are administered to students monthly as a salary for their work.
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MRP&IFP PROGRAM
While academic courses establish the foundation of students’ careers, research projects also support students’ ability to set and reach their professional goals. Students face competitive job markets and graduate programs after their time at the CHC, and unpaid internships are not always financially feasible for students.
MRP&IFP PROGRAM
Dr. Barbara Mossberg, a CHC professor of literature and creativity across disciplines, calls her mentorship with Hailey O’Donnell a delight. “The joy of this was getting to read Hailey’s work and get to know this work in the context of her hopes and dreams, the story she is putting out into the world,” she said. The program was designed to let faculty and students develop their mentorship’s structure. "I first asked Hailey to write me a letter about her hopes and dreams beyond college,” Mossberg said. “Then I asked her to imagine what kind of work would prepare her in terms of experience and knowledge to play this role and contribute her gifts.” From there, Mossberg created a schedule for the projects O’Donnell would complete over the term including writing her own poems and manuscripts then learning the ins and outs of the process for getting them published. “Dr. B has really helped me feel empowered to share my work and ideas about publishing with
with the world,” O’Donnell said. With her aspiration to support young writers’ publication throughout her career, so she appreciates how much Mossberg taught her about publication processes for new creatives. The MRP also allowed Donovan to stay in Eugene during the summer, making it convenient for him to hop on-board more projects in Assistant Professor Damien Callahan’s lab while also gaining head start on his undergraduate thesis research. "With this program, you are able to develop a more rooted, but still professional, relationship with faculty who you may not have had the opportunity to meet,” Donovan, a human physiology major, said.
Though internships provide students with valuable experiences and important skills while allowing them to explore career paths, unpaid internships can place a financial strain on many. The CHC has developed the Internship Funding Program to support its students’ participation in non-credit-bearing internships. The program enables students to take internship opportunities they otherwise may not be able to afford to participate in.
“This internship has reminded me of the human lives undergirding the topics I study in my major, which reminds me why I am studying and why I seek a university diploma.”
Raimy Khalife-Hamdan, a double major in romance language and global studies is focusing on migration, displacement, and refugees. Last summer, she became archive intern at a nonprofit organization, Their Story is Our Story.
“Had I not received financial support from the Internship Funding Program, I would not have been able to pursue an internship with CIP— an organization I have admired since middle school,” she said. “This program has empowered me to pursue work that matters dearly to me— work that will at once prepare me for my career and help me to make a difference in the world today.”
“The purpose of this archive is to bring all refugee interviews together in one digital platform so that individuals from around the world can access them,” Khalife-Hamdan said.
CHC junior Kyla Lauersdorf was an intern at the California Innocence Project (CIP) this summer and enabled her to gain valuable experience in a field she hopes to pursue postgraduation.
MRP&IFP PROGRAM
INTERNSHIP FUNDING PROGRAM
placed in the following term’s applicant pool. Any CHC student in good academic standing is invited to apply, though students with financial need as indicated on the FAFSA/ORSAA are prioritized. Students may apply for as much as $5,000 which can only be used to cover living expenses during their internship. Students will receive their funding after they’ve completed their internship experience.
MRP&IFP PROGRAM
CHC students and their mentors can apply now to fund this year’s projects. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis, and early applicants will receive priority consideration. For more information about how to apply, see Mentored Research Program or Internship Funding Program. Financial awards will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis. Applications received after a term’s Week Eight will be
THE TRIPP FELLOWSHIP: FOLLOW YOUR PASSION WITHOUT BOUNDARIES As a Clark Honors College student at UO, serendipity shined on Julie Tripp (’69). During her time as a journalism major, she encountered amazing opportunities that enabled her to travel the world and opened doors for even further life-changing experiences. She learned one very important lesson from that time: she made it a practice to never limit her possibilities. That meant Tripp stayed in Spain where she attended the University of Madrid while political demonstrations rocked the city. Those studies led to an internship with the US Information Agency which then led to a fellowship from the InterAmerican Press Association that enabled her to study and report from Mexico. Then later, as a city reporter for the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson, her editor recalled her background in Spain and sent her to interview the European Community ambassador when he came through town. Impressed with her skills and knowledge, the ambassador offered her a position in the European Community Visitor’s Programme, which enabled her to travel across the continent and proved to be an unforgettable experience. “You never know where something is going to lead,” she says. “Be ready to jump at the chances and keep your passport current.”
“Be ready to jump at the chances and keep your passport current.”
The links in the chain of success are sometimes happenstance, as Tripp has experienced throughout her career, which included a 30year stretch as a reporter and personal finance columnist for The Oregonian. Now retired, Tripp looks back on her experiences in the honors college as a spring board for a rich, professional life. She wants to open doors for current students to explore their interests and passions just as she did. The Tripp Fellowship, new to CHC students this year, is a $5,000 award to support study, exploration, and/or research. Two fellowships will be presented for international travel over a six-week period during the summer for students between their junior and senior years. The funds may be used to assist fellows with expenses related to travel, tuition, fees, books, lodging, meals, passports, visas, or other related research or educational expenses, and can also be associated with a formal study abroad program.
THE TRIPP FELLOWSHIP
Tripp wanted as few stipulations as possible on the fellowship with students free to embark on an experience that will be meaningful to them. “I don’t want students on this fellowship to be saddled with deadlines or onerous reporting requirements,” Tripp says. “Just propose a great project, have fun doing it, and then come back and tell me about it over lunch.” Tripp says. “The Tripp Fellowship offers CHC students a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to pursue a passion project abroad—and it doesn’t necessarily have to be related to their thesis,” Elizabeth Raisanen, assistant dean of advising & strategic partnerships, adds. “This award will enable students to embark upon unique and memorable journeys that will remain with them long after graduation.”
Tripp credits CHC for setting her on a course to a great career and a life of intellectual curiosity. In the fall of 1965, she was an excited but worried freshman afraid that she “might not measure up to the brainy kids in the honors college,” she recalls. But while a rigorous and tough biology class “scared the beejeebies” out of her, the enthusiasm of her professor, George Streisinger, was so infectious that it drove her to a higher level of study. Another literature class taught by Ernest G. Moll also ignited her drive for experience and a desire for always wanting to learn more. “Those fires of thought,” Tripp says, “nothing can beat them. That’s what I hope this fellowship will spark.” Students can apply for the Tripp Fellowship via the CHC’s annual scholarship application process. The online application will open the first week of winter term and will remain open through Monday, February 17, 2020. Students can contact Elizabeth Raisanen, Assistant Dean of Advising & Strategic Partnerships, with questions about the Tripp Fellowship.
THE TRIPP FELLOWSHIP
"Julie has done a truly beautiful thing,” Dean Gabe Paquette says. “Her gift will enable generations of CHC students who share her passion for travel, learning, and enquiry to explore the world and to discover their place in it."
SURPRISE GIFT ALLOWS 31 CHC STUDENTS TO WORRY LESS ABOUT COSTS AND FOCUS MORE ON THEIR EDUCATION STORY BY BY ELIN ENGLAND, CHC ALUMNI & PARENT OUTREACH PROGRAM MANAGER
MEGAN WILLHOITE For Megan Willhoite, putting herself through college is challenging. A sociology major and sports business minor, the Clark Honors College student has been paying tuition on her own, without support from her family. "College is stressful," Willhoite said. "As a student it's hard enough to find ways to finance your education, even with financial aid and student loans." But in late July, Willhoite received a bit of a reprieve from that stress. She and 30 other CHC students were notified that a generous gift from Mary (BA’76, JD’80) and Brett Wilcox had covered their differential tuition in full for the 2021/22 academic year. Mary Wilcox had previously served on the University of Oregon Board of Trustees as the chair of the Academic and Student Affairs Committee. Willhoite was both surprised and delighted when she opened the announcement email.
"These gifts give students like me the chance to focus their time and energy on their education, not how they are going to pay for it," Willhoite said. "The CHC is an immersive experience and provides driven students the opportunity to engage with their equally driven peers across disciplines on unique topics. There are no other programs that allow this type of interdisciplinary engagement and removing a cost barrier to this experience makes it that much more enriching."
SURPRISE GIFT FOR CHC STUDENTS
AARON CASSERLY CHC junior Aaron Casserly was surprised when he received the email notification about the gift, since he hadn't applied for it or even knew that it existed—because it didn't. When the Wilcoxes made their gift, they did it unconditionally, allowing CHC to determine how to best use the funds. Interim Dean Carol Stabile immediately thought about the differential tuition cost, and the difference it would make if the gift was shared by a multitude of students.
As he works toward a major in mathematics and two minors in physics and computer and information science, Casserly found the differential tuition offset a big relief. Having recently immigrated to the U.S. from Jamaica, Casserly has experienced a unique set of challenges. The Wilcox gift has enabled him to focus on academic interests like quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and braincomputer interfaces.
“At a time when public funding for education remains low, differential tuition allows the CHC to provide small classroom experiences for our students, dedicated professional and faculty advising, and award-winning teaching,” Stabile said. “Gifts like that provided by the Wilcoxes can help us make the CHC experience affordable for students facing financial barriers.”
"Offsetting tuition is important," Casserly said. "This gift has provided financial peace of mind that will help focusing on academic enrichment."
SURPRISE GIFT FOR CHC STUDENTS
AYULOOWA POPOOLA Another CHC recipient, Ayuloowa Popoola, says that it is difficult to provide for a family while attending school full time, but this support will help make it possible for him to continue pursuing his goal of becoming a physician's assistant. Hailing from Port Harcourt, Nigeria, he is majoring in human physiology and, as part of Damien Callahan's Muscle Cellular Biology Lab, Popoola investigates the impact of aging on muscle and tendon movement in older female adults. To support his wife and two children, Ayuloowa also works part-time as a caregiver . “In the CHC, we are committed to making sure that donors’ gifts directly impact our students’ lives,” Stabile added. “From gifts like the Wilcox’s to gifts made by CHC alumni, families, and friends, donors help us offset tuition costs,
provide summer funding for internships, support student research with faculty mentors, and create dynamic programs like our Visiting Fellow in Equity, Justice, and Inclusion.” The unexpected donor support provided by Mary and Brett Wilcox has allowed 31 students to pursue opportunities that may well have remained out of reach, to have a measure of financial relief during a period of uncertainty, and to take the curiosity, passion, and intellectual prowess they acquire here in the Clark Honors College to go out into the world – our world – to make a difference. By making a difference in the lives of our students, donor support allows our students to pay that generosity forward.