what your investment in ut makes possible
40 HOURS FOR THE FORTY ACRES
mar/apr 2014
president’s
associates
We must always strive to be the very best at what we do. The University of Texas at Austin is creating a new vision of leadership in higher education through its teaching, research, and public service. We are positioned to become the best public research university in America. To earn that ranking we must continue to attract and retain superb faculty. We must educate students to be the next generation of leaders. We must also do cuttingedge research; it not only strengthens our impact on society — at the core of UT’s mission — but also has tremendous economic benefit to our great state.
When you give to President’s Associates, either annually or through a permanent endowment, your gifts support our best faculty and students and allow me to respond to opportunities that will further enhance UT. Together we will have a greater impact than any institution of our kind.
Bill Powers President
President’s Associates 866-488-3927 giving.utexas.edu/our-donors/presidents-associates
CHANGING THE WORLD What your investment in UT makes possible
CONTENTS 40 HOURS FOR THE FORTY ACRES Get ready for a Longhorn-style give-a-thon
CULTURE CHANGE One professor’s quest to end student debt
Cover: Students will be an integral part of 40 Hours
for the Forty Acres, taking place April 3-4. Through a blitz of social media, email, and phone calls, as well as a student event on campus, 40 for Forty promises to make an impact that every Longhorn can be proud of. CREDIT: Christina S. Murrey
Above: From analyzing flavor profiles to sampling freshly prepared dishes, UT Nutrition Institute participants learn myriad ways to put mindful, nourishing nutrition into practice. Enrollment is under way for this year’s conference, taking place on campus May 22-24. CREDIT: Jean Roasa
SAVORING WELLNESS Bridging nutritional science, health care, and culinary arts
WHY I GIVE: BECAUSE WE NEED MORE DOCTORS Meet the donor of Dell Medical School’s first scholarship reprinted from mar/apr 2014
CHANGING THE WORLD What your investment in UT makes possible
40 HOURS FOR THE FORTY ACRES Get ready for a Longhorn-style give-a-thon.
Above: 40 Hours for the Forty Acres is an unprecedented effort to reach out to the entire UT community at once. Alumni will be encouraged to participate via social media and there will be an April 4 campus event for students. CREDITS: From left, Christina S.
Murrey; Jonathan Smith/College of Natural Sciences
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J
u s t i n ca s e a n y
Longhorns
need another motive to give to the
Campaign for Texas, adding to the festivities of this final half-year of the campaign is a new, first-of-its-kind effort. Over two days in early April, 40 Hours for the Forty Acres will challenge UT alumni, friends, and stu-
dents to “beat the clock” and raise at least $40,000 by giving whatever they can to any program that matters to them. Alumni have already helped UT raise its annual giving rate during the campaign. Lisa Michelle Frankel, MBA ’09, Life Member, was one of thousands who gave, for instance, to the McCombs School of Business during its recent quest to raise alumni participation. “Every
little bit helps,” Frankel says about her $100 donation. Indeed it does, and that is the idea behind 40 for Forty. For students, 40 for Forty will be an opportunity to enhance their alma mater before even getting a degree. While President Bill Powers
CULTURE CHANGE ONE PROFESSOR’S QUEST TO END STUDENT DEBT
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$40,000 in 40 hours! April 3 & 4 Join the cause at 40for40.utexas.edu and #40for40 and other campus leaders have been asking everyone this year to come together and make history by achieving the campaign’s $3 billion goal, this is the first short-duration “all hands” appeal across multiple channels. So how will it work? 40 for Forty will be a “campaign within the campaign” that will kick off April 3 at 12:40 a.m. and end April 4 at 4:40 p.m. For those keeping track, that’s 40 hours of fundraising fun. Through an outreach effort including a blitz of social media, email, and phone calls, as well as a student event on campus, 40 for Forty promises to make an impact that every Longhorn can be proud of. “This is a new way for alumni to give,” says Luke Ward, a communication studies major who works part time at UT’s Call Center and has been involved in the 40 for Forty preparations. “It’s the first time UT has done a specific campaign on a specific day,” he says. “But the exciting part for me is that this is the first time students are being invited to get involved in giving while we’re in school. We’re getting a chance to step up and give back, which I think is really cool.” In addition to raising at least $40,000 for University programs, a secondary goal is to draw at least 400 student donors. Participation is key, and the emphasis will be on encouraging alumni, friends, and students alike to show their burnt orange pride with a gift of any size. In future years, organizers hope 40 for Forty will become an annual tradition. “In addition to asking our alumni to give, we aim to build a culture of philanthropy among our students while they’re here,” says Adrian Matthys, BA ’97, the University’s director of annual giving. “After all, each of them is a future alumnus, and our alumni make it possible for students to achieve great things every day.”
ast year, more than 17,000 undergraduates borrowed a collective $191 million to attend the University. The average student debt of a UT bachelor’s degree recipient at graduation—including those who receive scholarship support—is about $26,000. Recognizing the many downsides of such indebtedness, UT neuroscience professor Max Snodderly has a plan to help students obtain a degree without going into debt. In return for receiving assistance from UT’s new Opportunity Scholars fund, which Snodderly has seeded with a $100,000 endowment, recipients will sign a promissory note pledging to give back to the fund when they are able. Over time the endowment will support more students as contributions accumulate. “I want it to be a change in culture,” Snodderly says. “The culture we have now, and it’s nationwide, is that students are expected to go into debt to get an education. I think that’s the wrong way for things to happen. It’s the wrong time of life to have to be in debt. And it’s the wrong attitude to have. So this is an attempt to see if it can “It distorts be modified. I hope UT our whole can set an and social fabric.” example say, ‘We can do better.’” Snodderly, who researches vision and teaches a course on visual neuroscience, says that being dogged for years by interest-bearing loans places financial strain on graduates when they are establishing their career and perhaps starting a family. It also discourages them from choosing less lucrative professions that make valuable contributions to society. He observed the problem when he was on the faculty at Harvard Medical School. “There you see physicians in training coming out really deeply in debt—hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he says. “Are they going to go into an underserved area, or family practice? Probably not. It distorts our whole social fabric.” While the ultimate goal of the endowment is to provide the opportunity of a debt-free education to all UT students receiving financial aid, emphasis will first be placed on helping those with the greatest need.
Max Snodderly
Opportunity Scholars, for their part, will be able to take full advantage of the college experience and the opportunities for personal growth it offers, including extracurricular activities. Rather than take a job off campus, they’ll be encouraged to volunteer or work on campus in ways that complement their studies. Naturally, they’ll have to keep up their grades for continued support. Joe Wilcox, coordinator of endowment services in UT’s Office of Student Financial Services, says more than half of all aid disbursed to students is in the form of loans, while student loan debt in America has rapidly become one of the largest forms of consumer debt—greater than credit card debt and second only to mortgages. “At a time when two out of three students graduate with loan debt, we must seize every opportunity to lessen the burden,” he says. “The Opportunity Scholars fund provides us with the means to make a change for good.” The initial focus of the endowment will be on undergraduates, but as the fund grows, graduate students may be included. If somebody wants to support the fund with an outright gift rather than an endowed one, or designate support for students in a particular area, that can be done too, says Wilcox. He and Snodderly worked with the University Development Office to set up a flexible framework for all types and sizes of donations. With that in place, the more funding that is received, the greater the impact will be. For students who participate, Snodderly says, “The agreement is you get to go to college without going into debt. Your obligation is, when you get out and you’re making money, you contribute. I want that to become a cultural tradition.”
Learn how you can help at giving.utexas.edu/opportunity-scholars. s e p t e m b e r | o c t o b e r 2011
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CHANGING THE WORLD What your investment in UT makes possible
SAVORING WELLNESS Something good is cooking on campus as UT bridges nutritional science, health care, and culinary arts.
W
hile “eating well” can mean different things to different people,
for the dietitians and nutritionists in UT’s Department of Nutritional Sciences it means enjoying foods that are delicious as well as nutritious, that nourish the mind and body alike. The
department, part of the School of Human Ecology and College of Natural Sciences, puts that definition into practice with its University of Texas Nutrition Institute.
Above: Freshly made meals, as well as lectures and discussions, will promote health and wellness at UT Nutrition Institute’s 2014 conference in May. Opposite: Chef David Bull leads hands-on cooking classes in which attendees taste and discuss the foods they prepare. CREDITS: From left, Jean
Roasa (2); Marcia Inger
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UTNI brings together nutrition researchers, culinary experts, and health care professionals each spring for a two-and-a-half-day conference that aims, in a fun and engaging way, to give participants a better understanding of nutrition so they can more effectively help others discover better health through food choices. This year’s gathering, with the theme “Nourish,” will be held on campus May 22-24. UTNI began with a trip to California. A small group including Monica Meadows, BA ’94, PhD ’03, a nutrition lecturer who directs UT’s Coordinated Program in Dietetics (and now UTNI), and Susie Jastrow, BS ’69, BS ’95, Life Member, a longtime UT advisory council volunteer and
supporter, traveled to Napa Valley to attend “Healthy Kitchens, Healthy Lives,” a conference that offered a novel approach to blending kitchen skills with medicine and science. Jastrow, a dietitian, diabetes educator, and volunteer with St. David’s Foundation, recalls wondering why Texas didn’t offer something similar. “I’ve always believed that people who cook eat better,” she says. “When the conference was over, we just knew we needed to bring something like it to Texas. But we needed to make it relevant to Texas.” To help launch UTNI, Jastrow built relationships with community partners and donors who saw the important connection between the Uni-
versity’s teaching and research mission and the wider health care community. UTNI partnered with St. David’s Foundation and Central Market and continues to build its community relationships. As planning began for the inaugural conference, Jastrow and Meadows reached out to nationally recognized Austin chef and restaurateur David Bull to see if he would be interested in presenting a session on flavor profiling. He was so enthusiastic that he also signed on to lead hands-on cooking classes—one of the most popular components of UTNI, understandably, because participants taste and discuss the foods they prepare.
WHY I GIVE
BECAUSE WE NEED MORE DOCTORS
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ike many people, Matt Bell has heard there’s a doctor shortage looming. The difference? He’s doing something about it. The Dallas resident was the first person to create a scholarship at UT’s Dell Medical School, which now has its inaugural dean and is scheduled to accept its first students in the fall of 2016. Bell hopes the Matthew G. Bell Memorial Endowed Student Tuition Fellowship will make careers in medicine more enticing to would-be doctors deterred by the high cost of a medical education. “I’m interested in helping people who want to become doctors,” he says.
“I’m interested in helping people who want to become doctors.” – Donor Matt Bell
For Bull, nutrition is key. “I wanted to be a part of UTNI again this year because I think in today’s society nutrition is often overlooked,” he says. “People talk about it and know it’s important but don’t always have the right tools or information to include it as part of their daily lives. I’d like everyone to walk away really knowing that cooking nutritious, well-balanced, mindful cuisine is not hard—it’s actually pretty easy when we break it down to basic fundamentals.” On the research side, this year’s conference will feature researchers exploring nutrition’s impacts on health across the life cycle, from pregnancy and childhood through adulthood, as well as topics including obesity, aging, and immune response. Pediatrician and author Ari Brown, BS ’88, will discuss introducing new foods to children, and dietitian Alexa Sparkman, MA ’82, will demonstrate motivational interviewing, a way to help others discover what might be standing in the way of making better choices. For fun there will be an evening wine and food pairing in the LBJ Presidential Library. Meadows says participants will gain nutritionrelated knowledge and a better understanding of the importance of communicating the relationship between food and health. “Talking about these issues is pivotal to health outcomes, and we provide a new tool set to do that,” she says. “I would love to see UTNI leading the way in a conversation about eating well and living well—for ourselves, our family, and our patients and clients.” Visit nutrition-institute.com for more information and to register for the May 22-24 conference.
Bell is making a difference in a big way; he has chosen 50 medical schools across the country and is giving a scholarship bequest to each one. Choosing Dell as one of the 50 wasn’t difficult, he says. “The University of Texas at Austin is the
premier school in the state of Texas. Although there are other University of Texas medical schools, I felt that this would be the best of the best.” Matt Bell With his 50 bequests, the Carnegie Mellon graduate has become something of an expert at philanthropy to universities, and he says that with many schools he faced a frustrating process that was lengthier than it had to be. But giving to UT was different. “It was probably one of the best experiences,” he says. “It was phenomenally easy.” Someone was always available when he called the University Development Office, he says, and staffers offered detailed guidance on the various methods of giving he could choose. Another difference between the University and other schools: UT is creating a relationship with him, not just taking his money. “That’s part of the pleasure of doing this,” Bell said. “This is a great opportunity to connect with the University.”
Gifts of all sizes are welcome at Dell Medical School. Learn more about supporting the school at utexas.edu/dell-medical-school.
CAMPAIGN UPDATE giving.utexas.edu/campaign
$2.75 billion. That’s how much the Campaign for Texas has raised so far, thanks to the generous participation of nearly
250,000 alumni and friends. The impact can be seen and felt across UT, from new buildings to endowments benefiting students and programs. The next six months will be crucial.
Let’s make history together.
1,212,966 1,075 Outright gifts and pledges worth $2.38 billion
Planned gifts for future needs, totaling $368 million
Changing the World is produced by the University Development Office. Please send your feedback and suggestions to editor Jamey Smith at jjsmith@austin.utexas.edu. For more news and information about giving to UT, visit giving.utexas.edu.
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