Gifts help various areas on campus

By Lynette Murphy and Brandon Smith

Twins who have great memories of studying chemistry in McKinley Hall, former teachers who still want to make a difference, a retired faculty member who’s an avid football fan and a son who wanted to honor his father who started a business are among the recent donors to WSU’s Endowment Association.

 

It was the right chemistry

Fraternal twins Tony and Henry Beugelsdijk, 1971 graduates of WSU, heard early in their college careers about the dreaded senior Physical Chemistry class. Fellow chemistry majors lamented the difficult coursework and instruction.

When it came time for the brothers to enroll, a new teacher, Mel Zandler, was assigned. He made the always-feared class enjoyable — actually "fun," Tony Beugelsdijk says. The students uniquely bonded, studying together and even playing a round or two of basketball outside of class. Zandler still teaches that course in McKinley Hall, which houses the chemistry department.

"McKinley Hall grew to be a home away from home," says Henry Beugelsdijk. "When you spend half your day there it becomes like family."

Memories like that in part prompted the two brothers to give $50,000 to furnish and equip a large lecture hall containing a multimedia station in the soon-to-be renovated McKinley Hall as part of an ongoing chemistry campaign at WSU. The room will be named the Beugelsdijk Lecture Hall in their honor.

Each Beugelsdijk has become quite successful in his field. From WSU, Tony went on to receive his master’s and doctoral degrees in chemistry from the University of Illinois and an MBA from the University of New Mexico. Henry completed medical school at the University of Kansas.

Now, Henry lives in Hutchinson and is an anesthesiologist at Halstead Hospital in Halstead, Kan. Tony, employed by the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, is director and founder of the Association for Laboratory Automation. He is currently on a one-year sabbatical at Parke-Davis Pharmaceutical Research in Ann Arbor, Mich.

As donors to the chemistry campaign, the brothers each chose an element on which their names will be etched on the "Elements for Success" periodical chart in the renovated McKinley Hall. Each selected an element to represent his name: Henry will have "He" (helium) to represent the first letters of his name, and Tony chose "Tb" (terbium) for his initials.

 

Helping teachers

For many years the House of Schwan Inc. has been a contributor to Wichita State University, with the main focus of its support being athletics and the Alumni Association. A recent gift of $25,000 from company president Barry and his wife Cindy Schwan, however, is benefiting the academic side of WSU.

"We wanted to get more involved in the university community as a whole," Barry Schwan says. Starting in the 1999-2000 school year, the Barry and Cindy Schwan Endowed Scholarship in Education will be awarded.

"We are honoring those teachers who go above and beyond, who are willing to teach to individuals as well as to groups, who will put in the extra time and effort to make a concept learnable for all," Schwan says. "The best teachers will do this on a daily basis, and we want to provide scholarships to those student teachers who will strive to meet this goal."

Both Schwans are ex-teachers and feel that the College of Education is "an underappreciated area, compared to others." This attitude led them to donate to the college.

 

Kicking off football scholarships

With a personal goal of establishing a $100,000 endowment package for football scholarships at WSU, emeritus faculty member Bob Anderson and his wife Darlene have kicked off the game at $50,000. They’re hoping other individuals, businesses and alumni chapters will play offense by initiating and then fully endowing one or more athletic scholarships.

The Andersons remember the days of tailgate parties, homecoming parades, pep rallies, burning opponents’ mascots and the like. They’d like to create similar "school spirit" experiences for today’s Wichita State students and attract students ages 18-25 to campus, so they recently created three separate football scholarships at WSU.

"We need something to build a stronger enrollment of this age group," says Bob Anderson. The couple is using what they call the "shallow pocket" approach to solicit funds for football and an equal number of women’s scholarships to comply with Title IX. People able to give $1,000 a year can build up to the endowed $10,000.

It is estimated that 170 scholarships would be needed for football and three other women’s sports so building a $100,000 endowment for each of those scholarships is the Andersons’ ultimate goal. "The beauty of this scholarship is that it will be endowed forever and provides a stable source of funding," says Darlene Anderson. At least one group of individuals, Support Our Shockers, is meeting and discussing funding proposals.