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I n d i v i d u a l s a n d g i f t s t h at a r e t r a n s f o r m i n g U C F
From Tragedy, Renewal
In the spirit of an extraordinary young doctor tragically killed in 2002, and with assistance from a fund established to carry on his legacy, UCF students help and heal in the Dominican Republic
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ne day in the early summer of 2002, a young Winter Park doctor named Don Diebel Jr. stopped on the side of a stormsoaked highway in Sumter County to help at the scene of a rollover accident. As he and another good Samaritan, 26-year-old Oviedo firefighter Shane Kelly, worked to extract a young couple from the wreck, a passing tractor-trailer lost control and careened into the site of the accident, killing both men instantly. For Diebel’s wife and three young children, his siblings and parents, his many friends and colleagues, even the broader Central Florida community, it was an almost unspeakable tragedy. Diebel had been not only a father and a doctor and a friend to many; he had also been uniquely generous with his time and his talents, his final selfless act perfectly in character. That generosity played out not just in big, visible ways — like a long history of medical missions to developing countries — but also in smaller,
more personal ways, quietly helping where he was needed in his own community. It wasn’t until after his death, in fact, when those he had helped began to share their stories, that even his family began to understand the extent of his generosity. At the time, it must have seemed inconceivable that any good could ever come from such a tragedy. But, as the weeks passed, something new emerged from the grief and loss — a galvanizing resolve to honor Diebel by furthering his deep commitment to using his medical training to serve less fortunate members of his own community and the world beyond. Out of that resolve was born the Diebel Legacy Fund, established by Diebel’s family and friends to honor and celebrate the good Samaritan and the value of service. The best way to create more caring, community-minded doctors like Diebel, the fund’s leaders believe, is to help expose medical students to the same kind of profound need Diebel found on his
Lockheed Martin Gives Patient Simulators Three high-fidelity mannequins given this summer by Lockheed Martin will expand simulation training in the College of Nursing, allowing students to practice physical exams, history-taking and diagnostic and communication skills in a safe environment without risk to a patient. Now an integral part of nursing education, simulation also enables instructors to stage a wider variety of scenarios than students are likely to see during their clinical rotations. “We are proud to be a long-standing partner with UCF in advancing training and innovation,” says Jon Rambeau, Lockheed Martin’s vice president and general manager for Training and Logistics Solutions.
trips abroad and during his volunteer work at home. That belief played a central role this summer in supporting a team of nearly 40 UCF medical, nursing, pharmacy and engineering students and faculty on a service-learning trip to the Dominican Republic to render badly needed care, counseling and aid in some of the country’s most impoverished villages. It was the fourth year for the now annual trip and the second year the Diebel Legacy Fund funded scholarships to help students — 20 of them this summer — with expenses. Diebel would have loved to see them coming home, said his brother Pete after a reception at the College of Medicine for the returning students, weary but proud and changed for good, with a renewed sense of service and responsibility. In fact, Pete said, “I like to think that he would have been on the trip with them. I think he would want to be a part of this.” Which, in a very real way, he is.
THE BIG NUMBER
3.9
Mean high school gradepoint average of UCF’s freshman class this fall, up from 3.8 last year
Yes, UCF is getting bigger, with enrollment topping 60,000 this fall, but more importantly the university is also getting better — markedly so. This year’s entering class not only boasted an enviable average high school GPA, but also included 79 National Merit Scholars — roughly the top one-third of 1 percent of the country’s high school graduates. That figure is up an astonishing 30 percent over last year, landing UCF second among all Florida colleges in National Merit Scholar enrollment and among the top 40 nationally.
Message from the CEO
Inspired Giving Dear friends: I’ve been thinking a lot about the difference between motivation and inspiration in philanthropy. Without resorting to Webster’s, it seems to me that the former is largely internal; we may feel motivated to give, for example, out of loyalty or because an organization aligns with our values. Inspiration, by contrast, may come from outside. When a person or an event is so powerful that it touches us deeply, we often are inspired to give in a way that acknowledges or honors what we’ve witnessed. In this issue of our newsletter, it’s the “inspired giving” stories that I find most compelling. The Diebel Legacy Fund is a wonderful example – sparked by tragedy, but inspired by Don Diebel’s own remarkable generosity, which lives on in new generations of UCF medical students and their service to others. Similarly, the Dupuis siblings, inspired by the differing passions of their parents, were able to create a fund in The Burnett Honors College that recognizes both their father’s interest in sports and their mother’s love of books and scholarship. And recent UCF graduate Lauren Murphy found her inspiration for giving in the generous donors who helped make her education possible. Whatever motivates or inspires you to support UCF this year, we welcome the opportunity
“ Your generosity may very well inspire others to begin a philanthropic legacy of their own.” to discuss how your philanthropy can make a lasting difference. As this issue’s stories will attest, there are countless options for assisting UCF students, faculty and staff in ways that you find most meaningful. Who knows, your generosity may very well inspire others to begin a philanthropic legacy of their own. Please accept our thanks for all you do to advance the University of Central Florida. Our very best wishes for the coming year. Warm regards,
Robert J. Holmes CEO, UCF Foundation, Inc.
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Dreams Achieved
A UCF education and the donors who made it possible turned Lauren Murphy’s dreams into reality. Now she wants to do the same for others.
When Lauren Murphy graduated from UCF in 2012 with a civil engineering degree and her dream job as a Disney Imagineer already waiting for her, giving back to the university was almost a foregone conclusion. “I wouldn’t be where I am today without donors who believe in the university’s vision,” she said then of her decision to make a generous gift just weeks after graduating. “I am proud to now stand with them.” Two years later, Murphy, who has now managed several projects at Walt Disney Imagineering — most recently the Interactive Queue at the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train at Magic Kingdom Park — remains just as appreciative of the scholarship assistance she received and just as inspired to follow in the footsteps of the donors who funded those scholarships. “I aim to pay it forward,” she says, “and do the same for other students, so they can achieve their dreams as I’ve achieved mine.”
Murphy gives to The Burnett Honors College because, she says, the college opened tremendous opportunities to her — developing her leadership potential as president of the Honors Congress, for example, and polishing her engineering skills during an internship at Walt Disney World that eventually led to a full-time job. More specifically, her most recent gift, matched by her employer, helps fund scholarships for students traveling abroad on service-learning trips. Thanks in part to Murphy, UCF students in a variety of majors will spend a month next year in South Africa working on projects related to sustainable energy and elementary education in rural parts of the country and to wildlife study and tracking in the Nambiti Game Reserve. “I’d like to help make UCF a place where all students are enabled to chase their dreams and positively impact the world,” Murphy says.
Unprecedented Collaboration Top public research universities develop national “playbook” to boost low-income and first-generation success Forecasts suggest that by 2025 the American economy will face a shortage of at least 16 million college graduates, raising the question of what institutions like UCF can do to produce more of them. One obvious answer is narrowing the achievement gap between low-income students and high-income students, the latter of which are seven times more likely to earn a college degree. That’s exactly what the new University Innovation Alliance, a coalition of 11 of the nation’s top public research universities, including UCF, hopes to achieve. With $5.7 million in funding to date from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Ford Foundation and four other organizations, members of the alliance will share and adapt ideas and develop a national
“playbook” of programs that will benefit low-income and first-generation students. The alliance members — including, among others, Arizona State University, Michigan State University, Purdue University, The Ohio State University and The University of Texas at Austin — serve a combined 378,000 undergraduates, including large numbers of low-income and first-generation students, and each has pioneered programs to help students succeed. “Through this unprecedented collaboration, we will help more students across the country earn high-quality, four-year degrees and experience the life-changing opportunities that accompany those degrees,” said President Hitt during a September kickoff event in Washington, D.C.
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‘Enthusiasm to Give Back’
Philanthropist Harris Rosen establishes endowed deanship in the college that bears his name
A decade ago, with a gift of $10 million plus 20 acres of land in the midst of Orlando’s tourist attractions, hotelier Harris Rosen helped make possible the construction of a new hospitality campus that today is UCF’s Rosen College of Hospitality Management. Now, Rosen has made another landmark gift, this time pledging $5 million to establish an endowed deanship — UCF’s first such position — in the college that bears his name. The new deanship — a prestigious type of faculty position that helps university administrators recruit and retain top academic leaders and provide them with the necessary resources to advance their visions — will ensure that highly qualified leadership continues to guide hospitality management education at UCF for generations to come. Dr. Abraham Pizam, who has overseen Rosen College as dean since its inception in 2004 and has taught at UCF for 31 years, will continue to serve as dean with no immediate plans to retire. “It is perfectly fine to want to be very successful,” Rosen said recently. “But there’s a caveat: When you have reached most of your goals and you’re enjoying the moment, it’s important to find someone who needs a helping hand and extend one to them. Life is not complete unless you balance your enthusiasm to be successful with enthusiasm to give back to others.”
Harris Rosen at the Rosen College of Hospitality Management
Fitting Tribute
An endowed scholarship for studentathletes honors a sports-minded father and a book-loving mother
“ They know how to put a values proposition together, and they can stand up and lead a team.” —Brian Crutcher, ’95, executive vice president at Texas Instruments, on why the company aggressively recruits graduates of UCF’s College of Engineering and Computer Science, who, he says, bring an unusual amount of personal maturity and business acumen in addition to their engineering skills. Because of that — as well as several other key factors, like UCF’s proximity to a large concentration of high-tech firms — TI has chosen to partner with the university in an effort to attract more students to engineering and related majors and to better prepare those students for a workforce that needs more of them than American colleges are now producing. Most recently, that partnership took the form of funding assistance for an unconventional new complex of four labs, including the Texas Instruments Innovation Lab — a “Maker Space” designed to encourage the kind of creativity and freewheeling collaboration that so often spawns the ideas that change our world.
When Martin Dupuis, associate dean of The Burnett Honors College, and his sister, Alison Clemence, decided to honor and memorialize their parents by creating an endowed scholarship, they faced something of a dilemma: What could they do that would be a fitting tribute to both their father — who had been very active in sports as an athlete, coach and fan — and their mother, who had been a reader and a scholar? The simple solution was to find students who embodied both of their passions, and, as it turned out, Dupuis was virtually surrounded by them — the roughly 20 studentathletes who are enrolled in The Burnett Honors College in any given year. So he and Alison designated their endowed scholarship to help one of them. This year that student is softball player and health sciences (pre-clinical) major Kaitlyn Steckel, a junior from Tampa who traveled to Ireland this fall as part of Knights Without Borders to work with Habitat for Humanity on a community hall renovation project. “To be the first person to receive this scholarship is just awesome,” says Steckel. “It just motivates me to work so much harder on and off the field.” Of course, studentathletes in the honors college aren’t the only ones who excel academically. In fact, UCF student-athletes boast one of the best academic records in the NCAA, with an 89 percent graduation rate across 67 different majors and a GPA better than 3.0.
Scholarship recipient Kaitlyn Steckel
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President’s Award for Andersen Foundation
‘To Make Sure that Joy is Well Taken Care Of ’
With a new endowment, Denise Hall provides for the future of her friend’s captivating body of work In late October, donors who had made gifts or completed pledges of more than $25,000 in the past year were welcomed by President Hitt at the Burnett House, the president’s home at UCF, for the annual President’s Appreciation Reception. “Tonight, we are here to thank you, our most loyal and generous friends, for all you have done to enhance UCF,” Hitt told the group. “You are truly our partners for success.” The reception culminated with the presentation of the President’s Award — given each year to honor a family foundation or individual whose philanthropy has created an extraordinary impact at UCF — to the Martin Andersen-Gracia Andersen Foundation, represented by Thomas P. “Picton” Warlow IV. Martin Andersen, who established the foundation in the late 1960s with his wife, Gracia, was the influential owner-editor of the Orlando Sentinel for more than 30 years. He played a key role in Orlando’s development and, as a Founding Subscriber of UCF, put personal money on the line to help secure land for the campus. Today, the Andersens’ foundation remains a valued partner to UCF, supporting some of the university’s most important initiatives, including the UCF College of Medicine.
Long-limbed and fanciful as the Florida water birds she loved, painter, muralist, author, performer and early environmentalist Joy Postle was deeply proud to make a living from her art at a time when much of the country thought a woman’s place was in the home — not slogging through swamps, climbing trees and braving clouds of biting bugs to find her elusive subjects. She was also passionate about sharing her knowledge and appreciation of wildlife and wild places, combining song, dance, drawing and painting in entertaining but educational performances for both adults and schoolchildren. Those performances brought to life the birds she observed as closely as a scientist, teaching as no textbook could. It was at such a demonstration that Denise Hall first encountered Postle in the early 1980s. Hall was initially skeptical of the artist, elderly with thick bangs and round glasses. “I had been a teacher, and I knew what it took to capture students’ attention,” Hall says. “But she had them in the palm of her hand.” A friendship blossomed, and Hall began collecting the artist’s work. She was at Postle’s bedside when she died at 93 in 1989 and
continued collecting art and memorabilia, eventually transferring the collection to UCF so Postle’s enchanting visions of old Florida could be enjoyed and appreciated by yet another generation. This year, to ensure that Postle’s art is not only conserved and catalogued, but shown in annual exhibitions, Hall established the Joy Postle Art and Ephemera Collection Endowed Fund, which will help defray the costs of preserving and maintaining the collection and of promoting and curating gallery shows both on and off campus. “I wrote a check for $25,000 for the endowment and I nearly fell over,” she says. “I am not rich. I am a wife, a mother and a former teacher. My husband is a veterinarian. But do you have to be a billionaire to make a difference? No. I want to make sure that Joy is well taken care of when I am finally gone.”
UCF Leaders, Former Members Welcomed at Foundation Board Reception
Allen Trovillion, right, with UCF Foundation CEO Bob Holmes and UCF President John C. Hitt.
On the eve of the October meeting of the UCF Foundation’s board of directors, current and past board members gathered together with current and past university trustees, athletics and alumni association board members, and university leaders at the Interlachen Country Club in Winter Park. The purpose, said foundation board chair Phyllis Klock, was simple: to allow those present, whose meetings typically involve a packed agenda, to connect in another way — “to meet spouses, find mutual interests and enjoy each other’s company,” as she put it. But the evening was also about remembering the past and honoring the work of board members emeriti. “We cannot forget the past,
The University of Central Florida Foundation, Inc. — a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and the university’s primary partner in securing philanthropic resources — encourages, stewards and celebrates charitable contributions from alumni and friends to support the University of Central Florida. Ways of Giving The UCF Foundation offers a wide range of giving options. You may make a direct donation to the UCF Fund, plan one of several types of deferred or estate gifts, or establish a named endowment to benefit UCF in perpetuity. All gifts can be designated to support the college, program or initiative of your choice.
and all that has taken place to bring us to where we are today,” said Klock. Among those directors emeriti was Allen Trovillion, a charter member of the foundation board of directors and its second chair. In addition to his work for UCF, Trovillion, a general contractor by trade, was mayor of Winter Park from 1962–67 (beginning when he was just 36) and later a member of the Florida House of Representatives. “I’ve had a wonderful life of serving,” said Trovillion, who the next morning addressed the current board along with President Hitt and other university leaders, thanking them for their exemplary work to advance the university and the region.
Types of Gifts The foundation welcomes gifts made via cash, check or credit card; stocks; real estate; goods or services such as lab equipment or transportation; and other means. Pledge gifts may be paid over a period of up to five years. All gifts may be designated in honor or memory of a family member, friend or mentor. Next Steps To make a gift online or learn more about giving opportunities, visit www.ucffoundation.org. To make a gift by phone, call 407.882.1220. Check gifts, payable to UCF Foundation, Inc., may be mailed to the foundation with the intended area of support noted on the memo line.
UCF Foundation, Inc. I 12424 Research Parkway, Suite 250 I Orlando, Florida 32826-3208 407.882.1220 I ucffoundation.org
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