Your Gifts at Work

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

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.

Susan Gerstner ’81, P’17, P’20 and Dan Carlsen ’80, P’17, P’20
The Carleton Experience Enrichment Endowment

“We hadn’t considered that these opportunities weren’t available to all students, and that even with a full scholarship, they could still be out of reach,” says Dan Carlsen ’80, P’17, P’20. “It never occurred to us that this huge gap in discretionary income can create barriers to engaging in the Carleton experience.” 

By her count, Eva Grench ’19 is the 36^th person in her family to attend Carleton—a list that includes cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and even great-grandparents. Her parents, Dawn Scott Grench ’83 and Bruce Grench ’82, met in Myers Hall when they were first-year students. So because Carleton has meant so much to their family, Dawn decided to give back. 

Two generations of the Parker family show their love of Carleton through a newly created endowed scholarship.