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Land
sale reaps harvest for grad students
By
Amy Geiszler-Jones
The
recent sale of some farmland given to the WSU Foundation has yielded
much-needed money for graduate students.
Herschel
"Dene" Heskett left an estate of about $3.4 million to WSU when
he died in November 1997. Heskett, who had owned several finance
companies, also left the university about 1,300 acres of farmland
in Sumner County in Kansas.
With
the revenue produced by the farm’s harvests since 1998 and
the sale of the land this summer, an endowed fund of more than $860,000
was created for the Graduate School.
Heskett
had stipulated that the money generated from the land be used specifically
for graduate students and that the fund be named in honor of his
parents, Ollie A. and J.O. Heskett. WSU’s health and fitness
facility was named in honor of his parents, as well, in 1984.
This
fall, nine School of Art and Design students and three School of
Music students benefited from the $40,000 paid out by the fund.
The
gift is unique in many ways for the Graduate School, says interim
dean Susan Kovar. It’s the largest gift the Graduate School
has ever received, and it is the only gift that helps pay stipends
to graduate assistants who either teach or do research. Some departments
have funds to pay such stipends, but this is the first gift that
will help graduate students in any discipline.
The
other four endowed funds set up for the Graduate School recognize
and reward graduate students for their research and creative work.
The Heskett Fellowships will give students the potential to do that
work, Kovar says.
"We’re
really excited that someone was interested in supporting graduate
students," she says. "It’s always a question of who should
pay for graduate school. Many parents will say ‘I helped you
with undergraduate work, we’re not going to support graduate
work,’ so the student has to decide, ‘how am I going to
make the money to live’ and ‘how much loan and debt can
I put myself into?’ These types of funds are just so helpful
because they allow the student to earn some money and work in the
field they are training in."
Mike
Olson, one of this year’s recipients of Heskett Fellowship
money, agrees that stipends for assistantships are important.
"It
means that I don’t have to take out as much in student loans
and the teaching experience is crucial if I ever want to be a college
professor," says Olson, who’s teaching a beginning wheel-throwing
class as he works on his master’s degree in ceramics.
"Graduate
education is so important," Kovar says, "but when it comes to funding,
most people think in terms of funding undergraduate students. But
many of our graduate students are going to go on to be leaders in
their disciplines so it’s extremely important that these students
receive funding."
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