How Donors Help

Claire Hoffman was the first recipient of the Dorothy Thelander Scholarship, a prior LAS award established in honor of Dorothy Thelander.

New Funds in the College

It’s no secret to those who are inclined to give. Donors contribute to causes that mean something to them. These generous individuals want to have a positive impact on our students, faculty, staff, and our entire LAS family. And often they have an exact idea about what type of impact they want to make.

Since our last edition of Milestones, several of our donors have advanced our Brilliant Futures Campaign by establishing funds within the College. Sometimes funds are set up to support student scholarships or fellowships, sometimes they assist faculty or students with research projects, and other times they are created simply to offer whatever assistance is needed to a particular program or project. The real beauty is that there is no end to the causes to which donors can contribute.

Listed below you will find various LAS funds that have been established over the course of the last six months. Whether they involve student award money, research funding or equipment purchases, all of these funds have one thing in common—they improve the quality of education here in LAS.

Dorothy Thelander Undergraduate Student Award
This fund was established by Emile Karafiol, the widower of Dorothy Thelander, a professor in the Department of Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese for 27 years until her retirement in 1994. Dorothy Thelander’s passion was French; she taught French at UIC and was a specialist in the 17th and 18th century French novel. In honor of his wife, Karafiol established this endowment fund that annually provides a research award to an undergraduate student who is majoring in language arts in the department.

Gender and Women’s Studies Jane Addams Fund
As a professor, Margaret (Peg) Strobel served the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies for many years. Now as professor emerita, she started the ball rolling for a Gender and Women’s Studies endowment fund dedicated to Jane Addams. The fund will support the department in a variety of ways—program development, projects, activities, conferences and workshops.

John David DeHaan Fund for the Professor Joseph D. Nicol Professorship in Forensic Science
With nearly 40 years of experience in fire and explosion forensic science, John David DeHaan is an internationally recognized forensic scientist and a national expert on crime scene investigation and arson. He is also the author of Kirk’s Fire Investigations, the authoritative text and leading textbook fire scene investigation and reconstruction. DeHaan graduated from UIC in 1969 with a BS in physics and a minor in criminalistics. As testimony to the mentorship and support he received during his time at UIC, he established this endowment fund in honor of Professor Joseph D. Nicol, under whom he studied. The gift will be used to supplement the funding of a faculty position in forensic science in the Department of Criminology, Law and Justice.

Professor Siva Sivananthan, pictured in his lab, has established several different student awards in the College.

Sivananthan Student Award in Physics
In 1997, Siva Sivananthan, distinguished professor of physics, established the Sivananthan Undergraduate Research Scholarship Fund to provide annual scholarship support for undergraduate students in the department. Nine years later, he established a second endowment fund, the Sivananthan Graduate Fellowship in Physics, to lend yearly support to graduate students in physics. In March, Sivananthan decided it was time to establish a third fund, the Sivananthan Student Awards in Physics Fund , a current use fund which would give immediate financial support for prizes or awards to students in Physics.

Greek Holocaust Memorial Fund
Last winter, the Chicago Greek Community held a memorial event in the home of the Greek Consul General honoring the Greek Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust. Members of the UIC Jewish Studies Program were present at the event. Subsequently, the Chicago Greek community approached them with a proposal to arrange a similar, more ambitious memorial. As an initiative in a cooperative program with the Greek community, the Jewish Studies Program established the Greek Holocaust Memorial Fund in LAS Administration. This current use fund—funded by members of the local Greek community—will provide financial support for a two-day conference about the impact of the Holocaust on the Greek community and will include two prominent speakers. It will also celebrate 2,300 years of Jewish presence in Greece.

AMSENG Nano Structures Research Fund
In an effort to support the research of the Microphysics Laboratory in the UIC Department of Physics, Applied Material Systems Engineering, Inc. (AMSENG), of Streamwood, Illinois, recently made a gift grant in nano structures processing and related applications research. The AMSENG Nano Structures Research Fund will hold the installments from this grant which will be used by members of the Microphysics Laboratory to support scientists and technologists for research in nano structures, in sensors applications research as well as in health and related pharmaceuticals applications.

No matter what your giving level, your gifts have significant impact. You can positively affect the education of students, from one to thousands, in many ways on many levels. They, and we, appreciate every gift the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences receives.