Impact

More than one in five alumni have now made a gift to The Campaign for OSU, passing on the gift of a great Oregon State University education to today's students and students to come. The following recent gifts beautifully illustrate what a difference alumni are making:

For students: Hari Singh Sethi and Renuka Sethi met when they were graduate students at OSU. They married and Hari was on the faculty in the Department of Biology at California State University, Los Angeles, for almost two years. But in 1970, shortly after he earned his doctorate in Fisheries Science, he tragically died in an accident.

Renuka, a two-time Fulbright Scholar (Norway 1997-98, Ukraine 2001-02) who earned her doctorate in Child Development and Family Life in 1969, is now retired after teaching developmental psychology in the California State University system for over 30 years. Because of the fond memories she and her husband had of their time at OSU, she decided to create an endowed fund to help new generations of OSU graduate students. The Dr. Hari S. & Dr. Renuka R. Sethi Endowed Graduate Scholarship Fund will create research opportunities for students in Fisheries Science and Human Development. Renuka structured her gift so that awards will begin to be made immediately, while a provision in her estate will allow the fund to grow in the future.

For Oregon: John '76 and Sue Thompson '77 are both graduates of the College of Business, and today John is a Certified Public Accountant at Thompson Kessler Wiest & Borquist, P.C., in Portland. They have been strong supporters of their alma mater; John served on the OSU Foundation Board of Trustees and Sue served on the Women and Philanthropy Advisory Council.

In November, the couple committed $25,000 to benefit OSU's Accounting Development Fund. Thanks to the support of alumni like the Thompsons, OSU now offers more undergraduate business majors than any business school in the Oregon University System.

For the world: As a student, David Gould '66 played defensive lineman with the most recent OSU team to go to the Rose Bowl. A good friend and fellow teammate, Robert Jeremiah, later passed away from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease), while the Goulds' 3-year-old nephew, John Bartels, also died of infantile ALS.

Now president of Coos Bay Timber Operators in North Bend, David and his wife, Donna Bartels Gould '65, have given $25,000 in memory of these loved ones to create the College of Science Disease Mechanism and Prevention Fund, which will support ALS research — building on the work of OSU scientists like Joseph Beckman (pictured), holder of the Ava Helen Pauling Chair, who is known worldwide for his research on the prevention and treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.

Oregon State University | OSU Foundation