November 03, 2009
Bowling
Green, Ky. - Western Kentucky University announced today that it has surpassed the $150 million mark in its five-year, $200 million New Century of Spirit Campaign.
According to Tom Hiles, WKU’s vice president for Institutional Advancement, the campaign total stands at $151.6 million, which represents 76 percent of the goal. The campaign will conclude on June 30, 2012.
“We are very pleased with the progress of the campaign and very appreciative of our volunteers and donors who are making this happen,” Hiles said. “Donors appreciate naming opportunities and tax deductions, but more importantly they want to see the impact of their support. Their energy and support is fueling the transformation taking place at WKU.”
Don S. Vitale, co-chair of the New Century of Spirit Campaign, agrees. “Attaining the $150 million benchmark this early in the campaign, despite the major economic downturn, indicates to me the strong support that exists for WKU on behalf of the schools many friends and alumni,” he said.
WKU President Gary Ransdell said: “We are very pleased to have achieved more than 75 percent of our goal with two and half years remaining in the campaign. The New Century of Spirit Campaign will provide the means to effect profound changes across our campus community. Our alumni and friends are leading the way as WKU strives to become a leading American university with international reach.”
One gift that helped move WKU over the $150 million mark came from Karen (’66,’71) and David Matchus of Tampa, Fla., who recently made a $500,000 estate commitment for scholarships.
“We established a scholarship for education majors about 10 years ago because I was an education major at WKU and a school teacher for over a decade after I graduated,” Karen Matchus explained. “Education was my first chosen profession.
“The reason we elected to fund a scholarship was because I would have been unable to attend college without the financial assistance I received from scholarships, so this is a way to ‘pay forward’ and provide the same opportunities for young men or women who may be in the same situation that I was as a 17-year-old who wanted to attend college but was faced with the fact that my parents did not have the financial resources to pay for 100 percent of my college education.”
During her college days, Karen Matchus participated in the Big Red Marching Band, the Symphonic Band, the Gemini Dance band and Alpha Omicron Pi. Upon graduating with a Teacher Education degree, she spent four years teaching in Miami, Fla., before returning to WKU and completing her master’s degree in Education. She taught at the high school, junior high school and college levels for 13 years until she and David moved to Tehran, Iran, in 1978 with his job at GTE. She then taught in Tehran at Community School, which was an international school with students representing 42 nationalities.
When the Matchuses returned to Tampa in February 1979, Karen Matchus went to work for GTE Florida, eventually spending 21 years in the corporate world working primarily in human resources, an area that allowed her to frequently use her teaching skills. She has been fully retired since 2003, spends part of the year at the couple’s second home at Barren River Lake, and is involved in numerous volunteer activities at WKU and in southern Kentucky.
“We have elected to provide for ongoing funding of our scholarship through the directives of our personal wills because we do not have children and cannot think of a more productive use of whatever financial resources we may leave behind at the end of our lives than to promote higher education for students who choose to attend WKU and need that additional financial assistance to do so,” Karen Matchus explained.
“All lives, all careers, the future of our society, country, and world begin with the seed of education,” she said. “There is no nobler calling in life than to desire and provide a quality education for future generations. It is my hope that each of our scholarship recipients would pass it on. If, through helping to educate young people, we can in some small way enable a light to shine and intelligence to be fostered and grown in an individual who will continue that legacy, then my hope will have been fulfilled.”
More information on the New Century of Spirit Campaign can be found at http://www.wku.edu/campaign/index.html.
More WKU news is available at http://www.wku.edu/news/index.html and at http://wkunews.wordpress.com/.
Contact Tom Hiles, (270) 745-6208.
-WKU-
"A leading American university with international reach"
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