Donations to Otterbein affect each and every student who attends the university. These gifts make everything possible, from financial aid to classroom resources and campus buildings. Last year, there were over 4,000 donors who helped contribute to the $859,000 record-breaking Annual Fund.
These and other donations are processed in the Development and Institutional Advancement offices, which are home to a staff of people who promote Otterbein as a place to support. Matthew D’Oyly, a 2004 graduate of Otterbein, began his first year in Institutional Advancement as the director of Annual Giving and Constituent Communication this year. Before working with
Otterbein’s donors, D’Oyly was the assistant director of Residence Life at Otterbein and continues to serve as the adviser of the Sigma Delta Phi fraternity.
With his new position, D’Oyly is generating new and creative ideas that develop an atmosphere of giving at Otterbein and implement the giving message into everything.
“I love Otterbein. Otterbein has been home to me since I stepped on campus back in the fall of 2000,” he said. “I have some passion for Otterbein because it really helped me grow into who I am, as a leader, as a mentor and as an adviser.”
D’Oyly said he wants to make the same experiences he had possible for students now. “We are raising money to ultimately help students,” he said.
The Annual Fund is a general fund encompassing unspecified gifts that typically go toward scholarships and other campus resources. Donors are also able to designate their gifts to the areas on campus that mean the most to them. “I’m not sure that students understand that all of their scholarships and things like that come from donors,” he said.
The passion donors have for Otterbein shines through when they give, but also when they talk about how the university has impacted their life. Every story evolves differently, but each started the same — with Otterbein.
Over 40 Years of Support
Leaving campus or going home on the weekends wasn’t an option for Margaret Trent when she arrived at Otterbein in the fall of 1961. Returning to her hometown of Pittsburgh for only Thanksgiving and Christmas, the friends she made on campus became her surrogate family. “We were on campus all of the time, so you didn’t go off campus to stuff, you didn’t go home,” she said. “It was very much a community.”
Alongside being an elementary education major, Trent became actively involved with Theta
Nu, the band and the choir, even touring with the concert choir over spring break.
“Every weekend there would be things like an all-campus event, whether it was a dance or a movie, or some activity. And hay rides. All kinds of stuff kept us busy,” Trent said. “Otterbein was your life.”
Trent went on to teach for about five years in Euclid, Ohio after graduating from Otterbein in 1965. “Leaving Otterbein, I never had a job I disliked. I was just very, very lucky,” she said.
At some point within her first few years of teaching, Trent said she began to donate to Otterbein.
After 43 years of giving back to Otterbein, Trent said she envisions the amount she donates as one of her budgeted amounts for the year. “I don’t think that it is the amount, as much as the discipline of supporting,” she said. “Just starting small and trying to get in the habit of doing that. The consistency is the important thing.”
Along with giving yearly, Trent said she has also contributed to other initiatives on campus that are special to her and has continued to have a presence on campus. “I think that giving back time is also important. If you can, if you live nearby,” she said.
In the early ’70s, Trent returned to Otterbein to teach in the reading center helping students who were struggling with reading and study skills.
As one of the first members of the Alumni Council, Trent spent close to a decade serving on the board until rotating off. Today, she is involved with Friends of the Library and has served on the committees for both her 25th class reunion and her 50th, coming up in 2015. “If you can keep your classmates involved and connected, they are also going to give back,” Trent said.
The Faculty Impact
After beginning a career at Otterbein as the “Courtright Memorial”:http://www.otterbein.edu/resources/library/library.htm’s library director in 1990,
Lois Szudy began to contribute to the university. “I felt that it was important to give back to the university in some small way,” she said.
Szudy knew the importance of donating to the university since she had previously worked at Ohio Wesleyan. “It felt like the right thing to do,” she said. “If you’re going to work at some place, you ought to give back to that place.”
Not only is Szudy dedicated to her work as a librarian, but she has also expanded her interests throughout campus including Otterbein’s Equine Department.
“When I was a little kid I was passionate for horses,” she said. “When I started (working) here, I always happened to have lunch over in the Campus Center. I was just eating lunch with a bunch of faculty and Maria Calderone, who is one of the faculty members of the Equine Department, was over there, and I was saying how much I loved horses and that I hadn’t ridden in 20 years. So she signed me up for horseback riding lessons.”
Although Szudy has not been horseback riding lately, she stays involved with the Equine Department through designated gifts along with being the faculty adviser to the equestrian teams and the library liaison to the Equine Science Department.
Szudy has shown her involvement across campus through designating her annual gifts. “Every single campaign I try to be involved in in some way, shape or form,” she said.
“I donate as much as I can. It’s a very private thing for me. I mean, you donate if you can, if you can’t you don’t,” Szudy said. “It comes out each month (for me) in payroll deduction. So yes, they are paying your salary, and you are giving some of that salary back to the university, but it just felt right, so I wanted to help out.”
Young Alumni Involvement
Otterbein is not short of family tradition for Shannon Lord who is from Westerville and graduated in 2000. Her grandfather, who has now passed away, is an honorary alumnus and her dad, uncle, aunt, brother and sister all attended or graduated from Otterbein. “Our family just really likes Otterbein,” Lord said. “My husband didn’t go to Otterbein, but he does a lot of the alumni stuff with me. He loves Otterbein, too.”
Otterbein wasn’t Lord’s first choice because she wanted to explore outside of where she grew up, but after getting her financial aid package, Otterbein was her most affordable option. “I can’t imagine now, looking back on it, not choosing Otterbein,” she said.
She was an active member of Kappa Phi Omega, a student representative for the senate and was a student worker in the athletic office. “I just had a really great experience when I was here,” Lord said. “And it really was the best years of my life so far.”
After graduating from Otterbein, Lord went on to law school at Capital University and worked at a general practice law firm in Westerville before currently working at JPMorgan Chase.
Lord said that donating to Otterbein has been a way for her to make a difference in furthering the university and helping future students pay for college.
“I think every dollar counts. No matter how small or big,” Lord said. “I know when I first graduated and started giving, it was kind of like a small amount because that’s all I could afford. But I’ve tried to give as much as I can just because Otterbein means so much to me.”
Lord is currently a member of the Alumni Council which meets a few times a year to give feedback to the university from an alumni perspective.
“Your life at Otterbein doesn’t ever end I feel like,” she said. “Even though you graduate, there’s so many ways to be involved as an alumnus of the college.”
“I love Otterbein,” Lord said. “That’s all I can say.”
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