19 Reasons to Give to Rollins on Giving Day 2019

How much of a difference can you make in a single day? That depends on the day. On February 19, 2019, you have the opportunity to make a difference that lasts far longer than 24 hours and extends far beyond the confines of America’s most beautiful campus. That’s because February 19 is Rollins Giving Day 2019, and on this day your gift supports The Rollins Annual Fund, which provides essential aid for everything from scholarships and student advising to academic and athletic excellence.

There are countless examples of how your participation in Giving Day 2019 will make a difference in the lives of our students and in the communities that our students touch in our backyard and around the world. Here are 19 of our favorites.

1. You’ll amplify your gift’s impact. When 500 members of the Rollins family make a gift on Giving Day, $50,000 will be unlocked for The Rollins Annual Fund. Plus, when 100 donors give to Rollins’ Crummer Graduate School of Business, an extra $10,000 will go to The Crummer Annual Fund. As result, your gift—regardless of size—will help unlock $60,000 in essential funding for Rollins students. Join us on February 19 and make your gift go further.

Special thanks to the Rollins Alumni Association Board of Directors and Trustee Eric Spiegel and his wife, Doreen, for providing the Rollins Giving Day challenges!

2. You’ll empower Rollins students like Sam Sadeh ’18 to create powerful change right in our backyard. As a student, Sadeh combined his passions for computer science and service to found an after-school coding program for fourth-graders at a pair of local Title I schools that earned funding from Google. As a graduate, Sadeh is dedicating his career to merging technology and education to create positive change in the world.

3. You’ll allow students like Lindsay Van Beck ’19 to build community halfway around the world. Last summer, Van Beck was one of a dozen students who tackled an array of community development projects in Tanzania and Kenya on a field study led by political science professor Dan Chong. Each year, The Rollins Annual Fund supports dozens of these life-changing study abroad experiences that groom the next generation of global citizens.

4. You’ll help increase the value of a Rollins degree. Alumni giving is a key component of college rankings like U.S. News & World Report’s annual ranking of the nation’s best colleges. As a result, your gift on Giving Day 2019 not only supports current and future Tars, but it also helps enhance the prestige of your Rollins degree. Want to say you earned your degree from the South’s top college? Join us on Giving Day 2019.

5. You’ll support the kind of academic excellence that empowers students like Rebecca Charbonneau ’16 to thrive at one of the world’s most prestigious universities. Each year, Rollins’ rigorous, intimate learning environment prepares our students to excel on the world stage. For proof, look no farther than Rebecca Charbonneau ’16. After earning a master’s degree at Oxford, the double major in art history and critical media and cultural studies was one of just 35 U.S. students to earn a Gates Cambridge Scholarship, which allows the world’s most outstanding students to pursue a postgraduate degree at the University of Cambridge.

6. You’ll help entrepreneurs like Julie Colombino ’18MBA increase their life-changing impact. In 2010, Colombino founded the nonprofit REBUILD Globally and the ethical fashion brand deux mains to help fight poverty in Haiti in the wake of a devastating earthquake. Five years later, Colombino was struggling to grow her social enterprise from a two-woman endeavor into a global brand, so she sought and found rejuvenation in the Crummer Graduate School of Business’ Executive MBA Program. On January 14, deux mains opened a new solar-powered factory in Port-au-Prince that will not only double the brand’s production, but also double its impact by creating more jobs and transforming more discarded tires into runway-ready fashions.

7. You’ll empower Hamilton Holt School students like Shaffaq Noor ’18 to engineer a brighter future for herself and women around the world. In 2016, Shaffaq and her sister, Sehar ’16, founded a computer lab in an area of northern Pakistan where electricity—let alone high-speed internet—is a luxury. Now, students, teachers, and women from the community have their own space to access the internet and take courses in word processing and other computer-related skills. After graduating in spring 2018, Noor launched her career right away as an IT project manager at engineering and construction firm CDM Smith.

8. You’ll help students like Caroline Rosendahl ’19 explore the world and test their ability to make it better. In 2017, Rosendahl was one of six students who partnered with chemistry professor Pedro Bernal to install water filtration systems throughout rural communities in the Dominican Republic. This spring, the marine biology major will return to the Caribbean nation as a student leader and help Bernal and her classmates expand the reach of a program that has already distributed more than 20,000 life-saving filters.

9. You’ll help student-athletes like Becca Wilson ’18 shine on the court and in the classroom. Proof of Rollins’ commitment to athletic and academic excellence is everywhere—from our 23 national championships to our eight straight academic excellence awards. It’s also embodied by student-athletes like Wilson, who led the women’s volleyball team for four years and was the College’s 2018 valedictorian after posting a perfect 4.0 GPA.

10. You’ll give students like Marcus Brooks ’17MBA the tools to improve health care for veterans and their families. This U.S. Army veteran is using the elite business acumen he developed at the Crummer Graduate School of Business to enhance veteran population health care so that members of the military and their families receive the care and treatment they need.

11. You’ll give students like Isaac James ’19 the opportunity to make academic history at Rollins. A displaced child from the South Sudan, James made his way from Kenya to Memphis to Winter Park and became the first Tar to win a prestigious public policy fellowship promoting diversity and leadership in public service. Knowing firsthand the struggles of marginalized people fighting poverty and violence, the Presidential Scholar is studying the link between politics and economics so he can help people transition from refugee camps to developed countries.

12. You’ll help ensure that Rollins continues to rank among the nation’s best in blending academic and athletic success. Last year, Rollins earned its eighth straight Division II Presidents’ Award for Academic Excellence, which honors schools where student-athletes achieve an academic success rate of 90 percent or higher. Rollins’ 95 percent academic success rate was the highest in the Sunshine State Conference, and our student-athletes posted a cumulative GPA above 3.0 for the 34 consecutive semesters this fall.

13. You’ll inspire memories and relationships that will last a lifetime. Rollins students like Arsh Sadh ’22—an international student from India whose newfound tribe hails from Germany, London, Pittsburgh, and Winter Park—make lifelong bonds from day one. Whether they’re studying for a test, watching a lacrosse game, or just enjoying smoothies by Lake Virginia, Rollins students build forever friendships that are central to their development as responsible leaders and global citizens.

14. You’ll empower professors like Chris Fuse to help students quite literally shoot for the stars. The beloved physics professor parlayed his love of Back to the Future—and superheroes and comic books—into a career in science. He now uses that passion to inspire students like Josephine Spiegelberg ’20 whose career plans include taking on an entirely new field of astronomy.

15. You’ll fund cutting-edge lab and classroom technology where students will develop their passions and help create a brighter future. This past summer, Samuel Hanna ’21 and James Hoelle ’21 partnered with physics professor Ashley Cannaday ’11 to develop a new kind of microscope that might one day contribute to earlier detection of neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s.

16. You’ll give student-athletes the chance to be mentored by Hall of Fame coaches like Julie Garner. Rollins student-athletes thrive on and off the field thanks to the mentorship of coaches like Garner—whose women’s golf program was recently ranked No. 1 in all of Division II—and Tom Klusman and Glenn Wilkes Jr., each of whom earned his 700th career win in 2018.

17. You’ll provide the opportunity for art enthusiasts to gain hands-on, up-close experience in Orlando’s only teaching museum. As part of an original research project this past summer, Morgan Snoap ’20 and Cristina Toppin ’21 learned the intricacies of curating a professional art exhibition from the ground up at the Cornell Fine Arts Museum. This unique opportunity is just one of the ways the museum enriches our community. By offering art from across eras and continents, unlimited access to contemporary art at The Alfond Inn, and original exhibitions that ask difficult questions, the museum consistently challenges us to engage in the world by broadening our perspective.

18. It’s a beautiful day to give back and celebrate service. Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood debuted on February 19, 1968, making Rollins Giving Day 2019 the 51st anniversary of everyone’s favorite alum. Guided by principles of kindness, tolerance, and love, Fred Rogers ’51 was first inspired to serve others as a music major at Rollins when he read the plaque near Strong Hall that reads, “Life is for service.” What a better way to honor both Mister Rogers and Rollins than with a gift to help others follow in his footsteps?

19. You’ll help Hamilton Holt School students like Doragnes Bradshaw ’18 ’20MBA realize lifelong dreams. Bradshaw overcame incredible personal hardship not only to finish her college education but also to graduate at the top of her class as the Hamilton Holt School’s 2018 Outstanding Graduating Senior. Now the communication studies major is helping the next generation of nontraditional students realize their dreams by serving as a communications officer in the Holt school’s Office of Admission.

How much impact can you create in one day? Let’s find out. Join us February 19, 2019 and together we’ll show the world the difference a day makes.

Get ready for Giving Day 2019.