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Kendell '68 '71 and Kay '76 Chalk fund an East Carolina Scholars Award that benefits sophomore Jacob Davis
Knowing they're opening doors for a new generation of students
is what motivates many alumni and friends to give money to ECU
By Marion Blackburn
hilip Gibbs '81 thought outside the box when he decided to give money to his alma mater. Watching his daughter play basketball convinced him he could support athletics and academics, so he endowed a women’s basketball scholarship.
Ken '68 '71 and Kay '76 Chalk signed on to sponsor a prestigious East Carolina Scholars Award to make sure the university could attract the best and brightest students to campus.
A dream of sparking new dementia research at the medical school inspired Dr. Harriet Wooten to give. She created a fund benefiting investigators researching neurodegenerative diseases as a tribute to her late husband, who died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease.
From athletics to zoology, programs across campus are benefiting from gifts like these at a time when ECU needs them the most.
Alumni and friends are funding programs like the premier East Carolina Scholars Award and the new Access Scholars program, which provides scholarships to hard-working students for whom college tuition would present a financial hardship. The EC Scholarship is worth $10,000 a year for four years and it provides a one-time $5,000 stipend to study abroad. Donors are making sure professors have leadership support, researchers have funding for studies, and sports programs have scholarships for top athletes.
Their gifts often bear personal touches, reflecting their values or memories of loved ones, and allow them to share the fruit of successes made possible by an ECU education, they say.
“I’ve been very fortunate and blessed with a successful construction business,” says Gibbs, formerly of Greenville and now a part owner of Hamel Builders in Maryland. “When I was thinking about how I could give back, I really liked the idea of a scholar athlete. I have daughters, and felt a women’s sport would be appropriate.”
The spirit of giving has taken the spotlight recently during the Second Century Campaign, which had its public launch in 2008 with a goal of raising $200 million to support students, faculty and programs in every aspect of campus life—on main campus, at the medical center, in athletics and beyond. The campaign already has reached the $145 million mark, not bad considering the nation’s current economic downturn. Despite the overall gloom, Pirates are making ECU a priority.
“We may actually have benefited,” says Michael Dowdy, vice chancellor of university advancement. “People may have postponed giving to another entity so they could support ECU.” Two recent generous gifts are a good sign that’s true. The late Geraldine Mayo Beveridge ’39, a former Carteret County teacher, left a $1.5 million bequest to be used as scholarships for high school graduates in her area. Vincent K. and Linda E. McMahon of Connecticut, graduates in 1969 and co-founders of World Wrestling Entertainment, made a $1.332 million gift through their McMahon Family Foundation. Their gift will be matched with state funds to create two endowed professorships and a need-based scholarship fund.
The Second Century goal is really just a starting point, Dowdy says. It’s estimated the university will need one billion dollars in funding above its state budget in the next 15–20 years to attain the benchmarks set out in its strategic plan. That plan includes building and instruction at ECU, the state’s fastest growing university, and expanded classroom learning, technology, leadership, health and medical innovations, arts and culture, and support for the regional economy.
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In Their Footsteps
Read a profile of David Brody, who is carrying on his family's tradition of giving generously to support health care for the people of eastern North Carolina.
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Giving has a long tradition at ECU supported by powerful loyalty to the university and its eastern North Carolina home. From the university’s earliest supporters, many of whose names are found on the campus buildings, collections or other structures that bear their names, to modern patrons like the Brody Brothers Foundation (see accompanying story), they have made sure the university continued to grow. Like all UNC campuses, ECU receives state funding but that money only accounts for about 36 percent of the university’s needs. The rest comes primarily from students’ tuition and fees, grants and contracts, clinical revenue and from private philanthropy.
This campaign marks the first large-scale fund-raiser since Shared Visions, which raised about $54 million during the 1990s. It’s at the center of a modern wave of philanthropy from a growing sea of donors whose strong ties to ECU are often matched with ideals they’d like to set in motion. Contributing to ECU is important—and personal.
Total endowments in all foundations at ECU are valued at about $75 million, down from a high of about $95 million last summer, before the economic downturn. But there is some good news: total giving to the ECU Foundation is up about 15 percent from last year, and giving to all foundations has remained about the same. Total giving last year was about $37 million and the Division of University Advancement reports it is on track to meet or exceed that this year despite the economy.
 Personal gifts, personal values
Kay and Ken Chalk are long-time university supporters who also volunteer as leaders. Ken, a retired senior executive vice president at BB&T, formerly chaired the ECU Foundation and now serves on the ECU Board of Trustees. Kay chairs the Women’s Roundtable, a university organization recognizing women’s contributions to the university and encouraging their ongoing commitment. The Women’s Roundtable hopes to create a culture of giving among its members.
The Chalks were among the earliest supporters of the East Carolina Scholars Award, Kay Chalk remembers. “We heard (former Chancellor) Richard Eakin talk about the program when it was first getting started, and he made an appeal,” she says. “He said that if we were going to compete with Carolina, we needed these scholarships. We told him we’d endow one. When you’ve been given so much, there comes a time when you want to give something back.”
East Carolina Scholars are the university’s flagship merit scholarship program, attracting multitalented standouts with full tuition, some living expenses, summer research and study abroad. The university has about 60 EC Scholars, which are funded by combinations of individual gifts and endowments. There are service and leadership requirements attached to the scholarships, as well as a senior project.
The Chalks’ scholarship bears the name of Kay’s late father, Elmer Haskell, a hard-working retail manager for many years. The award goes to a student in the College of Business. The current Haskell scholar is sophomore Jacob Davis of Wilson, where the Chalks lived for many years.
Having an EC Scholars award is “the biggest honor you can get,” Davis says. “I was so glad to have people like the Chalks who were willing to give money for this program.”
Another award program attracting a lot of support is the Access Scholarship. This program began in 2007 to provide tuition for students with strong academic records who also had financial need. These hybrid scholarships serve hard-working students who might otherwise fall through the cracks when it comes to financial support. This year, the university hosted 62 Access scholars. These awards are supported by a donor’s $5,000 gift each year. So far, 77 Access Scholars are set for the next academic year, which will include the current students, plus 15 more. Three of the Access Scholarship have been endowed and will exist in perpetuity.
Foundations for giving
The university has three societies to recognize financial giving. The Order of the Cupola, with about 200 members, recognizes those with the highest levels of giving, with combined gifts of $100,000 and more. The Leo W. Jenkins Society, with about 100 members, recognizes those who have made a planned gift. A planned gift includes any kind of contribution that is made after a person’s death, and includes bequests in wills, life insurance policies, real estate or other bequest. The Chancellors’ Society recognizes annual gifts of $1,000 or more.
“We would like for all true Pirates to end up in one of these societies,” says William Clark, ’69 ’73, president of the ECU Foundation. “Not everybody is able to give in a lifetime at the $100,000 mark, but everybody is able to leave something behind. When you’re thinking about leaving something for those you love, we hope you’ll include East Carolina.”
To accommodate these levels of giving, the university has strengthened the systems and staff overseeing contributions of all kinds. Its endowment investments are held by three foundations: the ECU Foundation (supporting academic programs); the ECU Medical & Health Sciences Foundation (for the School of Medicine, Colleges of Nursing and Allied Health Sciences, School of Dentistry and Laupus Health Sciences Library), and the ECU Educational Foundation (Pirate Club for athletics). In addition, the ECU Alumni Association helps graduates stay in touch through special events, programs and newsletters. The foundations are each managed by volunteer-led boards of directors, many of whom have significant financial and investment experience. They work in concert with a professional investment advising firm that is employed by them. Staff members serve as liaisons between the university, the boards, the funds and their donors.
Academics and athletics come together in the ECU Educational Foundation, better known as the Pirate Club. In its 48 years, the club has been the driver behind many projects to build or renovate several facilities on campus. It’s also the primary sponsor of athletic scholarships and academic support for team members.
Last year, the Pirate Club raised $5.4 million in unrestricted giving, a record for the club, and $8.9 million in total giving. Membership reached 13,531, another record. This giving funded scholarships for roughly 450 student athletes, as well as capital improvements and other athletic-related needs. The scholarships include Gibbs’ women’s basketball endowment, as well as a golf endowment and others.
Mark Wharton ’93, executive director of the Pirate Club, says athletics and academics go hand in hand at ECU. “We’re the front porch of the university,” he says. “ When you can see Pirate sports on national TV, you can’t put a price tag on the exposure and the publicity. It builds a lot of excitement among people from all over the country. The bigger our program, the more exposure the total university gets, and from there, people realize how great our university is, and people want to be a part of it.”
Wharton hopes the Second Century Campaign raises funds needed for planned expansions of the football stadium, as well as for creating Olympic sports facilities, including a softball field.
“We have a sophisticated investment approach and we are very conservative,” says Carol M. Mabe, ’71, chair of the ECU Foundation Board of Directors and member of the Board of Trustees. She retired after a career that included serving as an executive for the Russell Corporation and Russell Athletic in Atlanta. When the endowment began showing signs of the down economy, she says, “we began talking to donors, to explain where we were. A lot of times they would write a personal check, to do whatever it would take to keep scholarships going. That’s the true spirit of philanthropy.”
Clark says this kind of partnership comes from bringing together people who have strong skills and personal commitment.
“Philanthropy is more than just raising money,” Clark says. “It means becoming involved with the university. We are helping people convert their passion for ECU into action. That can mean giving money, but it also means inviting people to give their time to be involved on campus, to join the Pirate Club and the Alumni Association, and to be an advocate for ECU.”
Old friends are making new gifts, too. The Alumni Association, under the leadership of Paul J. Clifford, has intensified its outreach to alumni and they’ve responded. The association currently has about 5,900 members, but there is a goal to increase that number to as high as 10,000. There is renewed emphasis on giving as part of greater overall engagement.
“ECU alumni are the most loyal in the country,” Clifford says. “Other schools enjoy loyalty for their athletics or other marquee programs but at ECU our alumni are passionate about all aspects of our university, from athletics to the arts to our world-class medical school. When it comes to making gifts, that loyalty generates tremendous support for scholarships and program development.”
Funding for research is also receiving new emphasis. The John and Harriet Wooten Laboratory for Alzheimer’s and Neurodegenerative Diseases Research is a grant-producing fund to support basic sciences research at the medical school through the Medical & Health Sciences Foundation, led by president Carole Novick. The Wooten family already funds two awards, the Henry Husted Wooten Keyboard Scholarship, honoring the Wooten’s late son, and a music therapy fellowship. Funding medical research serves a deeply important cause for Dr. Harriet Wooten that also commemorates her husband’s accomplishments.
Dr. John Wooten was the first orthopedic surgeon east of I-95 when he opened his practice in 1954. A vivacious, intelligent man, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s several years before his death in 2004, at 80. Funding from the Wooten Lab may help researchers attract more funding. “That’s what John would have liked,” Harriet Wooten says. Indeed, her husband took part in the early stages of planning the gift. “He knew he wanted to do this,” she says. “This is something that will last.”
The activities of the Wooten Lab are coordinated by an advisory board that includes Bob Lust, chair, Dr. Lamont Wooten, son of Drs. John and Harriet Wooten who is also a physician, and Qun Lu, along with other scientists. Lu is an associate professor in the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology. “The Wooten gift is the first private contribution to ECU devoted to studying the basic, molecular and cell biology mechanisms of Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases,” he says. “Understanding these diseases will allow the discovery of drugs to fight against Alzheimer’s, which increases each year even while we see a decrease in heart disease. I am extremely impressed by the Wooten family’s passion and commitment.”
Lamont Wooten shares a sense of satisfaction from his family’s gift to the medical school. Since the Wooten Lab has no walls, it will enable researchers to work with others at the university and beyond.
“Knowing that one person could make a difference gave us a lot of confidence to do it,” Lamont Wooten says. “Even with a small lab, one person can come up with a great discovery.”
Sabrina Bengel, who attended ECU in the 1970s and is now completing her degree online, serves as chair of the alumni association board. She and her husband own New Bern Tours, and she operates several other businesses in that historic city. She believes alumni can share their talent, time or other “treasure.”
“All of us have treasures to give, and they are different,” Bengel says. “They can be financial when people have become successful in their careers and understand the responsibility of stewardship. But we also have other treasures, such as mentoring students or serving the university in a volunteer capacity. It could be hiring Pirates. When alumni reconnect with ECU, we can share our treasure.”
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