UA SBS Developments Newsletter Spring 2023

DEVELOPMENTS

Spring 2023

Supporting Students Through the Magellan Circle

This February, the College of SBS hosted its annual Magellan Circle brunch to recognize more than 60 Magellan Circle Scholars and their Patrons.

“[Magellan Circle donors] have hope in our future, optimistic that hard-working, well-educated, critically minded, thoughtful, creative students can make a positive difference for everyone,” said SBS Dean Lori Poloni-Staudinger, who is also a Magellan Circle Patron. “To our students I say: ‘Even when things get tough, I hope you will remember that there are people who believe in you, people who are willing to invest in you.’” Here are a few photos from the celebration!

Student Spotlight Abigail Fitzmorris

Abigail Fitzmorris, the student speaker at the Magellan Circle brunch, will graduate this spring with a B.A. in political science and minors in criminology and French. After graduation, Abigail will apply to master’s programs in international affairs, with the goal of working for the Foreign Service.

In addition to being involved in the Greek community on campus, Abigail is a Club Advocate for ASUA and an SBS Student Ambassador.

Moving twice during her adolescence was difficult, and Abigail wasn’t excited to attend the University of Arizona. She struggled with mental health challenges and “lackluster” grades, she said.

It wasn’t until the pandemic forced a reboot of her college experience that Abigail found her path, joining Kappa Alpha Theta, Links Junior Honorary, and other groups.

“I came to the realization that you get what you give in life, and that time of self-reflection at home during the pandemic really made me realize how I was expecting to get so much yet giving so little,” Abigail said. “Through each and every opportunity received or connection forged, the pride I felt in my school deepened and subsequent passion blossomed.”

Abigail added, “This magical community and bountiful opportunities don’t just merely exist, either – they are afforded to us by the generous donors who believe in the University and its students. My fellow scholarship recipients and I cannot thank you enough for your contribution to funding not only our dreams, but our own sense of pride and loyalty in our identity as Arizona students.”

Patron Margy McGonagill, Abigail Fitzmorris, and Patron Garry Bryant at the 2023 Magellan Circle brunch

(L-R): Andrea Herrera, Isaiah Horton, Patron David Bartlett, Alexia Rascon, Patron Jan Wezelman, Joshua Hernandez, Olivia Schmidt, Patron Betsy Bolding

An Intergenerational Commitment to Students Studying Public Affairs Reporting

Growing up, Bill Jamieson followed two sports teams: his local team of Stanford and the University of Arizona. Bill’s parents met when they were both students at UArizona, and Bill also wanted to attend, but was persuaded by a high school counselor to go to Tulane instead. Unhappy there, Bill transferred to UArizona for his sophomore year.

“At my father’s insistence I majored in business. That lasted one semester,” Bill said. “To the day he died, he did not know that I transferred into journalism. My mother knew and said, ‘Just don’t tell him.’”

Bill was a sports editor for his high school paper and had a column in an off-campus newspaper. Bill recalls that Sherman Miller, the then director of the UArizona journalism school, told him, “You’re a lousy writer, but you have some hope and if you enroll in the journalism school I’ll help you.”

Miller was a former copy editor for The New York Times. “He was right out of the movies, an old-time journalist with a cigarette dangling from his mouth. He was a little crusty, but he kept me going and helped me improve my writing,” Bill said.

A favorite part of Bill’s college experience was serving as sports editor of The Daily Wildcat.

“I absolutely loved it,” Bill said. “We just had fun. We would go down to a print shop in South Tucson four nights a week and hang around while they did their hot type and ran proofs, and then we’d go have a beer while they finished up the paper.”

After graduating, Bill was a public affairs officer in the Navy, “which is the closest thing I ever was to a journalist.” Stationed in Japan at the age of 24, he had a staff of nine

and put out two newspapers monthly, one in English and one in Japanese. After he met his wife, Kennon, who was a Red Cross Worker in an Army hospital, his career plans for post-Navy life shifted.

“Once we decided to get married, I realized being a Minor League umpire and writing about sports would not support a family,” he said.

A CAREER AND CALLING

After working for his father’s business for six months – “the worst experience of my professional career” – Bill joined a start-up nonprofit on drug abuse control as an administrative assistant. This was followed by jobs in Louisiana and Atlanta where he ran the Metro Atlanta Council on Alcohol and Drugs.

Bill Jamieson and his granddaughter Hunter Metcalf with Journalism School Director Jessica Retis

Journalism alumnus Bill Jamieson (‘65) has had a rich and varied career, underpinned by the desire to help young people. Creating an endowed scholarship for students studying public affairs reporting – in partnership with his granddaughter Hunter Metcalf – is part of that legacy.

Story written by Lori Harwood and Alexandra Pere

Bill then worked in Governor Jimmy Carter’s administration in Georgia and then in Washington, D.C. as the director of the Office of State and Community Affairs in the Office of Human Development Services in what was then known as the Department of Health, Education and Welfare.

“In Washington, the longer your title, the less important you are,” Bill said with a laugh.

Bill added, “I joined them for a year and found it very difficult. I had a four-year-old and a six-year-old. I was leaving at 6:30 in the morning and getting home at 7 or 8 at night if I was lucky.”

Next, Bill served in two cabinet-level positions in Arizona Governor Bruce Babbitt’s administration and as chair of the Governor’s cabinet. Bill found his journalism training useful.

“I learned what reporters needed in order to do their job and figured if I could get them what they needed, I could probably get some pretty good press,” Bill said.

Bill made it his goal to personally know all the journalists in the press room. “My office was directly across from the Capitol, so my parking lot was where all the journalists parked. I always got there early with coffee.

“We developed a mutual respect for each other,” Bill added. “And I think it served the public well because information that got out was accurate.”

Bill left government in 1984 to form a public affairs and management consulting firm in Phoenix.

A “cradle-to-grave” Episcopalian, Bill was a senior warden – “which is sort of like chairman of the board without power” – and an ordained deacon. His ministry has centered around advocacy for low-income families and children, a passion that started during his time in the Navy and extended into the rest of his career. When he was director of the Arizona Department of Economic Security, his re-

sponsibilities included Child Protective Services.

“My personal focus was on kids who were in poverty and their mothers and building programs that offered hope,” Bill said.

EMPOWERING THE NEXT GENERATION OF JOURNALISTS

Bill decided to invest in the School of Journalism because his education was a major factor in building his career.

“I knew how to shorten things, communicate better, and look at events and issues in more than one way,” Bill said. “And to question everything.”

The Jamieson-Metcalf Family Scholarship for Public Affairs in Journalism will be reserved for students who show an interest in public affairs reporting.

“Anybody who knows anything about politics knows that local journalism is crucial,” Jamieson said.

“I am so thankful to Bill for establishing this scholarship,” said Jessica Retis, director of the School of Journalism and the product of scholarships. “I always think about this next generation and the students who will benefit. I just love when I turn on the TV and see my former students.”

“My hope is that the scholarship will help other young Jessicas emerge,” Bill said. “And they leave with a clearer understanding of what coverage of public policy is and how important it is.”

Bill appreciates the permanence of an endowed scholarship.

“No matter how successful we were in government programs, they were built on sand when political winds changed. There was no legacy there,” Bill said. “This is an opportunity to take my passion for helping young people and combine it with something that will be permanent.”

Bill’s granddaughter Hunter Metcalf (’21), a UArizona alum with degrees in neuroscience and cognitive science, will inherit the guardianship of the scholarship after Bill.

“I’ll be 80 years old this year. Who knows how much longer I’ll be around?” Bill said. “I don’t want the relationship with the School of Journalism to end with me.”

Hunter, who works in San Diego as a clinical research coordinator, said she was honored to be involved with this gift to journalism with her grandfather.

“He is just the best,” Hunter said. “He is just so kind and understanding and always gives people the benefit of the doubt. He’s been super influential throughout my life.

“I know the gift was such a big deal to him,” Hunter added. “Giving back are values that he has really instilled in me, so it was really nice to be a part of this scholarship, especially since this is where I went to college.”

When Bill Jamieson visited the School of Journalism in fall 2022, he shared his experience working at The Daily Wildcat student newspaper in the 60s.

Promoting a Lifelong Love - of -

When Dan Singer first went to college, at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, he was not a good student.

“I had very poor marks in my first semester,” Dan said. “And in my second semester I proved that if you don’t do any work, you still get poor marks.”

Dan dropped out of college, but over the years both he and his wife, Brenda, took various classes for work or pleasure. Brenda had a keen interest in anthropology and took accounting and computer programming courses for her job as bookkeeper for the William and Mary Singer Family Foundation. Bill was an investor.

In 2007, the couple decided to temporarily relocate to Tucson to help Dan’s parents who had developed health

complications. As Canadian citizens, the Singers decided the easiest way to be able to live in Tucson was for Dan to become an international student.

“It wasn’t that I had a burning desire to get degrees,” Dan said.

Dan started his higher learning journey at Pima Community College. He graduated with an associate degree with highest honors and received a scholarship to the University of Arizona. He majored in history and minored in creative writing, graduating Magna Cum Laude in 2013, at the age of 58.

“One thing about A’s is they are very addictive,” Dan said, adding that he would send his daughter, currently working on her Ph.D. in nursing, updates on his good grades. “I enjoyed taking courses just for interest and fun rather than for a job.”

Dan then went to Arizona State University to obtain a master’s in interdisciplinary studies.

“After ASU, my dad was still alive and kicking so I went back to the UA and got my master’s in legal studies in 2018,” Dan said. “What was my motivation? Not getting kicked out of the country! But school was actually quite enjoyable.”

EXPLORING HISTORY AND WRITING

“I was always a bit of a history nerd,” Dan said. “One of my favorite books when I was a kid was Ivanhoe. I would look up how close the fictional characters were to the real-life characters. I still do that to this day.”

Dan added, “If you don’t know where you’ve been, how

Dan and Brenda Singer

By funding an award for transfer students majoring in history, Dan Singer is supporting an educational path that has enriched his life.

do you know where you’re going? Right now, I see a whitewashing of history. I think it’s a great disservice.”

Dan recalls his time as a history student with great fondness. A course he took on biographies with History Professor Julia Clancy-Smith stands out.

For a course paper, he wrote about Alexander Thomas Augusta (1825-1890), a veteran of the Civil War and the first Black professor of medicine in the United States.

“He was one of these characters who’ve been forgotten or overshadowed,” Dan said.

Dan has been working on expanding that class assignment into a historical novel on the period.

“I’m only in it around 25 to 30 pages,” Dan said. “I found that writing historical fiction is difficult. You need to get all the life details right. You wonder, ‘Did he tie his shoe?’ Now you need to research clothing of the period, and research can be a form of procrastination.”

Dan got into creative writing for the first time while attending Pima Community College. “I wrote a story about a tree, and it won a writing contest,” Dan said. When he was at UArizona, he submitted a different piece to The Saturday Evening Post.

“I got rejected by the best,” he said with a laugh, adding that the piece was published in a transfer student magazine.

INVESTING IN DEDICATED STUDENTS

Dan and Brenda, who now live in Mississauga, Ontario, make many gifts on behalf of the William and Mary Singer Family Foundation, named after Dan’s parents.

“Giving money away is in its own way very intoxicating,” Dan said. “It’s more fun giving than working.”

The couple prefer donating to local nonprofits, although they support national ones, as well. Locally, the Foundation has given to the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona, Tucson Wildlife Center, Salvation Army, Emerge Against Domestic Abuse, among others.

“We like to help people in immediate need, especially in the areas of family, animals, education, and health,” Brenda said. “My focus is on children because my background initially was with children. We look for grassroot organizations.”

Dan decided to create the Daniel Singer Transfer Student Award – “I have enough of an ego that I wanted my name on it” – for history majors because he recognized the department might not receive as many gifts as say medicine or law. Members of the Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society, where Dan was vice president of membership, receive preference.

Dan recalls many transfer students in Phi Theta Kappa who were not wealthy and some came from diverse backgrounds and were older. “Some had kids, and they were getting the kind of marks I was getting, so I was impressed,” Dan said.

Dan added, “Transfer students are going into their third year, so they have an idea that this is what they want to do. It’s a good investment.”

“In our history classrooms we’ve been quite impressed with the quality of transfer students,” said Katherine Morrissey, head of the Department of History. “But we are also mindful of the fiscal challenges these students face as they move from their first two years at a community college to the University of Arizona to complete their degree.

“The availability of an undergraduate scholarship specifically for transfer students is a tremendous benefit. It recognizes their merit, celebrates their academic achievements, and facilitates the completion of their BAs,” Morrissey said. “The Department of History is extremely grateful to Dan and Brenda Singer for their generous support.”

Dan Singer with Erika Castaño, History Professor Steve Johnstone, and History Head Katherine Morrissey

Dan Singer with Erika Castaño, assistant librarian and archivist with Special Collections. He is holding the first hand-written copy of the song ‘Bear Down Arizona’ – written on an airplane vomit bag.

SUPPORTING STUDENTS ON THEIR CAREER JOURNEY

Jon Goldstein was 34 when he found a career he was passionate about: real estate debt and equity broker. He discovered it by trial and error. Throughout the process, the skills he learned as a University of Arizona student played a critical role in his success.

Wanting to give back to his alma mater, Jon has established the Jon Goldstein Scholarship in Urban and Regional Development to provide students with funds to help offset the cost of getting a higher education.

FINDING HIS CALLING

Jon was not a likely Wildcat. He grew up in the D.C. area and was looking at East Coast colleges. When a high school

friend raved about the University of Arizona, Jon visited campus and changed his plans.

“I attended the UA primarily to do something different,” Jon said. “I was interested in experiencing another part of the country that I had previously not spent any time in. I wanted to go to a large university that would afford me the opportunity of meeting someone new every day.”

Jon majored in economics and admitted the major was not a perfect fit for him. Nevertheless, he stuck with it and enjoyed his time as a student.

“I liked a lot of my professors and classes and just the general support of the University,” Jon said. “The weather was a big draw, of course. I loved the campus and fondly remember my days of hanging out on the mall, getting some sun, and kicking a hacky sack around with my friends. I really enjoyed going to football and basketball games when I was fortunate enough to get tickets.”

Jon graduated in 1993 on the heels of the recession and ended up working for a local bank. He found the work unfulfilling and monotonous.

“In hindsight, I probably worked there too long,” Jon said. “I knew it wasn’t for me, but I was struggling with what I wanted to do.”

Jon decided to go to graduate school full time, getting his MBA in finance and investments from the George Washington University, with the intention of ultimately becoming a portfolio manager of a mutual fund. Then 9/11 happened, which drastically altered the job market. Wanting to start a family, he returned to banking for financial security. He

By creating a scholarship in urban and regional development, alumnus Jon Goldstein is helping this generation of students find their passion.

Jon Goldstein

started doing a few commercial real estate loans and was fascinated. In 2004, when a job became available with a commercial real estate brokerage firm in DC, he applied and got it.

“I knew on my first day on the job that I finally found my calling,” Jon said. “It felt like I was born to do this. And 18 years later, I’m still saying the same thing. It doesn’t feel like a job because I just enjoy it that much.”

Jon is currently Principal of Capital Markets Group Debt & Equity Finance at Avison Young. He focuses primarily on debt and equity placement for office, retail, industrial, hospitality, and multi-family properties and has underwritten and closed more than $8 billion in financings during his career.

“I don’t have the money, but I find the money for my clients,” Jon said. “I enjoy bringing two parties together. I’m a deal junkie. Each deal is different, and each day is different. It’s fast paced and it’s something that I really enjoy doing.”

Jon loves to hear the stories of his clients and how they became successful. “It’s like being a part-time psychologist.”

The skills he learned in school have helped him succeed, Jon said, especially the ability to juggle multiple projects, be self-motivated, and work with various personalities on group projects.

“I know that I wouldn’t be where I am today without my college and graduate school experiences,” he said.

HELPING THE NEXT GENERATION

A huge Wildcat sports fan, Jon admits he was interested in meeting with SBS Director of Development Dave Silver because Dave used to be a Tucson sportscaster when Jon was a student.

“Dave and I have built a good relationship over the years,” Jon said. “He asked if I was interested in creating a scholarship. I’ve always donated every year, and I said yes –it’s a way for me to give back to the university that I love.”

He decided to focus on students majoring in urban and regional development because of its connection to real estate. The major, housed in the School of Geography, Development & Environment, addresses urban and regional growth, land development, and real estate.

“I want to give students an opportunity and help them get where they want to be,” Jon said, adding that his son, Tyler, is a freshman in college right now. “It blows me away how expensive it is.”

“We truly appreciate the support of Jon Goldstein and his commitment to the students in our urban and regional development program,” said Carl Bauer, director of the School of Geography, Development & Environment. “His endowment will support our students for many years to come.”

Jon also serves on the board of the George Washing-

ton University’s real estate and finance alliance and as a student mentor.

“I always tell students. ‘Don’t worry if you don’t know exactly what you want to do. If you’re hard-working and passionate about what you do, then you’ll eventually figure it out. The best thing you can do is network and not burn any bridges along the way,’” Jon said.

“I WANT TO GIVE STUDENTS AN OPPORTUNITY AND HELP THEM GET WHERE THEY WANT TO BE.”

- Jon Goldstein

Jon Goldstein at Lake Placid

Written by: Lori Harwood Designed by: Mackenzie Meitner

MESSAGE FROM THE DEAN

I hope you enjoy the spring Developments newsletter. The stories featured in this issue reflect the various ways our alumni connect to the college and how their education shaped their lives. For Bill Jamieson and Jon Goldstein, their time at the University of Arizona provided them with essential skills that followed them on their career journeys. Dan Singer earned his history degree later in life, motivated by fascination rather than career goals, and the experience enriched his life. All have chosen to give back to current students – thank you!

This issue also shares photos from our Magellan Circle brunch earlier this semester, as well as a profile on our student speaker, Abigail Fitzmorris. What a remarkable event! I was inspired to hear the stories of the 60 plus Magellan Circle Scholars. Thank you to our Magellan Circle Patrons – and all our donors – who transform lives through their generosity. ~ Lori

Poloni-Staudinger, Dean

of the College

of Social and Behavioral Sciences

Lori Poloni-Staudinger