FEATURESTHE GIFTS - WHAT ARE THEY FOR?
To help business students learn what they need to be successful...
By Amy Zukeran
, Special to the Florida State Times
When NationsBank gave $1 million to Florida State this spring, a bank executive gave credit for the gift to Florida State's faculty.
"There's real dedication at FSU by professors to make a difference," Jeri Hunter, senior vice president of marketing for NationsBank, said to explain her employer's gift to Florida State, her alma mater. "It's very clear they love what they are doing and want to help students. The students' success is their success."
Other FSU graduates now helping to run NationsBank have similar memories
Drew Whitaker, a 1981 graduate who is senior vice president of commercial loans, said he knew he wanted a business degree but had no idea that signing up for one class would lead him into an area of business management he hadn't considered before.
"I really didn't set out to get a degree in insurance risk and management,
but I was just enthralled with Bob Smith's classes," Whitaker said
of a professor in the College of Business. "It amazed me to
see someone with such a varied background who could bring his life experiences
into the classroom and make an otherwise 'not exciting' course come alive
for me."
Business-college students also get a taste of the highly competitive arena they will enter once they graduate. And they say that atmosphere helps to nurture the confidence necessary for a successful career.
"Through the recruiting process, you knew you were competing with a lot of people, so you really had to go out and sell yourself and the desire to succeed really had to come through," said Kevin Cobb, senior vice president for retail banking. NationsBank recruited and hired the '92 finance major straight out of school.
The NationsBank gift to the College of Business will endow two professorships, one in finance, the other in business administration, and pay for technology upgrades.
To help troubled youth grow up...
By Amy Welch, Managing editor, Florida State Times
Jessie Ball duPont was an educated and religious business woman, teacher and principal, and she believed in giving back to society as much as she could.
Though she died 27 years ago, her favorite charities, 350 of them, still benefit from her millions.
FSU is just one of those lucky institutions, receiving almost $4 million from her fund since 1970.
Born in Northumberland County, Va., in 1884, Jessie Dew Ball grew up appreciating education. Her father, a Confederate soldier, had lost his land as a result of the Civil War. Jessie was educated in a one-room country school and later attended what is now Longwood College in Farmville, Va.
She learned about business as a young girl collecting fees for her father, an attorney.
She was a teacher until 1908, when she and her parents moved to San Diego, Calif. There she became assistant principal of the largest elementary school in the city. In 1920, she rekindled a friendship with Alfred I. duPont, whom she had met as a teenager when he visited her town from Nemours, near Wilmington, Va., to go duck hunting. The two married in 1921 and stayed together until his death in 1935.
Jessie Ball duPont and her husband decided together which charities she would give to after his death. She then devoted much of the rest of her life to philanthropy.
When she died in 1970, the Jessie Ball duPont Religious, Charitable and Educational Fund was established to carry on her and her husband's charitable work.
Since then, the fund has given Florida State $3,942,741. Much of the money has gone to help struggling youths, to educate art students, to help the Tallahassee Boys' Choir through the School of Social Work and to help students help others live healthier and happier lives.
Ron Mullis, FSU professor of child and family sciences, said more than
$180,000 this year helped a program that allows FSU students to counsel
and inspire troubled youth.