Your Gifts at Work

Canceling in-person classes during spring term 2020 made the most sense to safeguard the health of the Carleton community, as well as the surrounding Northfield community. But it also posed a slew of challenges, particularly for low-income and international students. Luckily, the Alumni Annual Fund provides the college with flexible resources that can be immediately applied wherever needs arise. Here’s how gifts to the Annual Fund impacted our students during this unprecedented term.

Thanks to the Alumni Annual Fund, the remote spring term 2020 impacted students in surprising–and often advantageous–ways.

On a mission to learn more about wolves, geology major Ben Lowry ’21, biology major Maya Hilty ’21, sociology/anthropology major Katie Babbit ’21, and psychology major Amida McNulty ’21 headed to Yellowstone National Park with support from the Four Friends Fellowship. The wolves remained elusive, but the friends learned that many important lessons aren’t academic.

If you’re looking for Maya Rogers ’22 (Tulsa, Oklahoma), check the Rookery. Hidden in the center of the library’s fourth floor, the Rookery is a quiet spot just beyond the bustle of the circulation desk. Rogers likes to study there. “It’s a place where I feel very connected to Carleton,” she says. “I’m in the center of everything. But I simultaneously feel like I have space to do my own thing and focus on my work.”

Classics professor Jake Morton cut his teeth working in the field, wandering his beloved Greece searching for physical evidence of an ancient past. “You can run all the analysis you want on a computer,” he said, “but nothing compares to seeing it with your own eyes.” It’s no surprise, then, that after coming to teach at Carleton, he decided to share the benefits of fieldwork with his students firsthand by bringing three of them with him to Greece. 

With a gift to the Carleton tennis team, a St. Olaf graduate celebrates her parents, her daughter, and her former cross-town rival coach.

By endowing an internship named in memory of a fellow Carl, Tom Rock ’84 and Melissa Raphan stay true to their philanthropic beliefs.

Carleton students and professors are joining forces with the Dakotah Language Institute to preserve a critically endangered language.

International collaboration is a hallmark of Deborah Gross’s and Tsegaye Nega’s teaching.

Psychology professor Sarah Meerts believes introductory courses are just as important as advanced-level courses and projects. That’s why she partnered with postdoctoral fellow Brielle Bjorke to create Carleton’s first “Foundations in Neuroscience” course.