Heartfelt ‘Thanks!’ to college supporters
“Thanks to our alums and friends for your continued generous support! We rely on you more than ever as the cost of higher education increases so we can keep pace with new technologies and mounting needs in Idaho, even as our government’s ability to fund higher education is diminishing. We couldn’t
maintain our level of excellence without you!”
-John Hammel, Dean,
College of Agricultural and Life Sciences |
Editor’s note: More than 1,000 alums and friends of UI CALS
donated $5.2 million during FY 2008 to help with facility upgrades, faculty salaries,
and student scholarships. Stories below introduce two alums who offered support.
Carmelita Spencer:
Family & consumer sciences alum donates $500,000 for new
FCS food lab
Carmelita Spencer, 86, of Grangeville, is quick to say why she just donated half a million dollars to the University of Idaho College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.
“The most important thing in life,” she said during a recent interview, “is to do everything you can to help. You can’t give to anything more important than education.”
Her donation will help remodel the foods lab in the college’s School of Family and Consumer Sciences (FCS). The new lab is part of a remodel planned for the FCS’s historic brick building on campus. The new lab is likely to be named for Spencer once the 1950s-era lab is updated to meet modern requirements.
FCS is especially dear to Spencer since she studied that same discipline from 1939 until 1943. “Of course, it was called Home Ec. in those days,” she recalls. “But it was a great curriculum then, and it still is vitally important!”
For three years Spencer taught home economics in high school. After marrying John Spencer, she gave up teaching to help him raise four children. She also made volunteerism the foundation of her life, supporting Grangeville’s Syringa Hospital and founding the Bicentennial Historical Museum. She also helped local schools, the PEO, AAUW, Idaho Public Television, and the Republican Party.
Nick Purdy Family
UI education helped Nick Purdy succeed; now he gives back to a new generation
Nick Purdy’s 1962 graduation from the University of Idaho in agricultural engineering led to a lifetime of entrepreneurship and innovation, which still continues. Purdy, of Picabo, near Sun Valley, has won awards for years of service and accomplishments in the irrigation industry including expanding Silver Creek Irrigation statewide before he sold it. He and his son Randy were first in the U.S. to merge high-pressure big-gun irrigation systems with advanced computer central control systems to provide effective dust control for large cattle feedlots, a system still sold nationwide.
The Nick Purdy family, including his wife Sharon and his father Bud Purdy, pictured
above, recently donated to the college nearly an acre of land in a subdivision
ready for development in Picabo. When it is sold, proceeds will benefit a scholarship
endowment for biological and agricultural engineering students.
“My wife and I, two of my three sons, two of my daughters-in-law, and my grandson all have attended, or are attending the UI,” said Purdy, explaining his donation. “I feel we owe something back for what it has given us. I want to give some young people the same chances we have had because of our higher educations.”
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