Giving to Carleton

In its first year offered, the Qiguang Zhao Memorial Fund is already having a significant impact—in particular, it’s helped Cindy Chen ’18 reconnect with her heritage. An Asian studies major from Brooklyn, New York, Chen spent last summer studying Mandarin in Kunming, in China’s Yunnan Province.

I grew up on the dusty streets of Sakubva, an old township in Mutare, Zimbabwe's third largest city. My father was a bus driver at a local bus company, but then he got retrenched following a severe hyperinflation in 2008. Ever since, he has been hopping from one menial job to the next to make ends meet. My mother, on the other hand, operates a small market stall, where she sells an assortment of second-hand clothes, potatoes and vegetables. She's the most hard-working person I've ever known and to some extent, I think I inherited her work ethic. Being the first child in a family of five children, I've had to set good precedents for my younger siblings to emulate. I vividly recall taking up part-time jobs in the neighborhood on weekends or during school break, to help my mother put food on the table. I also paid my own tuition (and my siblings') through selling beverages and buns every day after school.

Growing up in a single-parent home in West Concord, Minnesota—a rural town of about 700—Annemarie Eayrs ’17 considered Carleton a world away from what her life would look like post high school. But thanks to the Malcolm J. Nelson Endowed Scholarship Fund, that world opened up to her.

Among the many reasons Carleton enjoys a strong reputation in the sciences is its penchant for project-based learning. Research is built into the undergraduate experience here—something students at other colleges might not experience until graduate school.

“The teachers here do a lot of research and put you in an experimental mindset,” says Malavika Suresh ’18 (Maple Grove, Minn.), a chemistry major. “You can take as many lecture classes as you want, but actually doing research teaches you in such a different way.”

Although it is named Jō Ryō En, “The Garden of Quiet Listening,” Carleton’s Japanese garden is often filled with laughter—especially on Thursdays. That’s when the volunteers who care for the trees and plants gather in the garden’s tea hut for coffee and treats before beginning their assigned tasks. Ranging in age from retiree to preschooler, the volunteers fondly refer to Jō Ryō En as a place of joy and contentment.

Welcoming one of the largest incoming classes Carleton has ever had will be a jubilant occasion this fall—and it will also present campus with a few challenges and a greater need for flexibility in budgeting.

“It’s hard to know on a daily or even monthly basis what the needs of the college are going to be, so allowing the leadership to be nimble and flexible with budgeting is important," says Alumni Annual Fund Board Director Betsy Sylvester ’06. 

Conceived in 2009, the Carleton Athletics Initiative (CAI) has helped campus find silver linings in a few difficult times.

When seven inches of rain gutted Laird Stadium in the fall of 2010, the building’s insurance coverage would have restored the stadium only to its pre-flood state—which was virtually the same as its 1927 opening. That wasn’t good enough for a group of former Carleton athletes.

Ever since his first job shining his father’s shoes, Chris Griffin ’17 has been passionate about footwear.

“You can tell a lot about a person by their shoes,” he says. “It’s an important part of how people represent themselves.”

Vicky Wu ’17 set off for her externship with high hopes but few preconceptions. She knew externing at NSW Corp. in Portland, Ore., with Carleton parent Laird McCulloch P’12, P’15 and Kyle Raines would teach her about real estate investments. She hoped it might give her food for thought about a career path. And she assumed, like many do, it resemble job shadowing—simply observing professionals going about their days.

She was wrong.

All the wild dreams students have—they really can come true, says Kyle Schiller ’17.

Schiller, for example, dreamed of going to Japan to work on an organic farm. It was one of those crazy things he and his friends talked about late at nights, laughingly pondering what life would be like in a place completely different from Carleton.

As a top swimmer and a top student in high school, Issa Wilson got used to people telling him he was special. In fact, he often agreed with them.

That’s what made his first term at Carleton so rough.