Thank you!
Your gifts help us to maintain our excellence as an English Department. Through the generosity of alumni and other donors, we've been able to provide our students and faculty with resources to enrich their learning, advance their research, and recognize their achievements. Here are just a few examples from last year of how your gifts have helped.
Each of the fifty-one English majors recognized at this May's Banquet and Awards Ceremony received fellowships and scholarships funded entirely by the alumni of the Department.
Gift funds help us recruit some of the best applicants to our graduate programs in English language and literature. We compete with best schools in the country — private and public — for these students. With funds to support Project Assistantships, bring recruits to campus, and raise the level of UW's support closer to that of our competitors, our graduate program is one of the strongest in the country. That pays dividends for undergraduate learning, too, when these same graduate students become teaching assistants and instructors.
Donors also help us recruit and retain faculty members. One special fund supports the Junior Faculty Research Semester Program that provides leave time to help assistant professors complete the pioneering research that will help them earn tenure. Such leave is automatic at many of the private schools and top-ranked public universities. Similarly, when we can offer a three-year professorship to a faculty member that supports his or her research and teaching, we help that professor rebuff inducements from other schools.
Gifts also provide support for travel to research libraries and conferences, for both faculty and students. These are invaluable opportunities to investigate original texts, or to learn about work that others are doing, and to share in cutting-edge scholarly conversations. Two of our undergraduate juniors (to be seniors next fall) will be using gifts funds to do original research at Yale's Beinecke Rare Book Library.
Gift support has become indispensable to providing our top-notch programs in English language and literature. We thank all who have contributed. The cumulative giving of modest donations from many alumni makes a huge difference. No gift is too small.