Reasons To Give
ADVISING RESOURCES
Contribute to Student Experiences
Would you like to help us continue offering challenging, hands-on programs that increase students’ awareness of the world we live in and how they can contribute to that world in a productive way? Or courses that help them develop important life skills like public speaking, financial awareness, or community service learning? How about to take on new creative endeavors like radio production or film?
Is there an experience you enjoyed in your education that you would like to provide for current Crown students? An event, a guest lecture, a workshop?
Crown has a history of developing rich and diverse courses, events, and extracurricular opportunities for students. We’ve had to be very creative to fund these projects in recent years, and never more so than at this time. Your support can help us maintain the level of academic and cultural programming that our students have enjoyed for years.
Any amount donated helps us enhance the quality of the Crown experience for our students. To give directly to a specific Crown program, please be sure to specify what you would like to support. If you are not able to make a monetary donation, we hope you’ll consider other ways of getting involved with the college.
Thank you for your support! It really makes a difference for student academic and residential life at Crown.
A Letter from Marilyn Shea-Stonum,
Class '69
When you read stories about rising student debt levels, how often do you recall what an incredible deal we got at UCSC in its early days? Do you remember with great fondness the true learning community that Crown College was for us? Provost Thiemann presiding at College Nights, long lunch hours in the cafeteria with fellow students and Crown faculty fellows extending what we were learning in classes, silly water fights, piloting kites in the pasture, taking long walks under second growth redwoods, preceptors making life in the dorms special. Certainly this list could go on and on. Your additions to this list are welcomed.
Some of us arrived when there was no tuition. Others from our general era dealt with very manageable tuition, fees, book costs, etc. Current Crownies can only wish for what was our reality. The good news is that Crown is still providing a meaningful base, particularly for the freshmen and sophomores who are living in the dorms. Provost Manel Camps strives every day to make the Crown experience a powerful one for today's Crownies. The Crown endowment generates approximately $40,000 a year in discretionary funds for Provost Camps to use on a long list of competing needs. One of his top priorities is to keep the Core Course sections small so freshmen can experience the critical inquiry that college is meant to provoke and to ensure students receive the individual attention that will launch their college experience most effectively.
A small group of alumni have been working with Manel to fund projects identified by the students that will make their time as Crownies better. Recent examples including refurbishing the student study area in the Crown Library and a renewal of the Fireside Lounge. If you were one of the Crownies who responded to these two efforts, thank you!
These experiences brought us to the realization that the Provost and college need more predictable ongoing discretionary funds to fulfill the college’s academic mission. These funds would serve to build on the core experience to create additional learning opportunities through the performance of plays seen in core (this year, students performed RUR) and through the mediatization of the research projects carried out in core in the form of videos or podcast to be shared with a wider audience. Additional funding would also serve to increase the participation of Senate Faculty and alumni in our teaching mission. This year we already piloted alumni participation in some sections of Core and in the summer we will be having a Robert d’Intino, a Crown alum, co-teach one of our entrepreneurship classes in the summer. Finally, discretionary funds would serve to enhance our ability to promote career readiness for our students by offering interdisciplinary classes that foster transferable skills and by providing opportunities for internships.
Our vision is to add $1 million to the endowment within a year. Thus, we are reaching out with a request to join us in a campaign that would double the Crown endowment. We hope this will reengage many Crown alums with the wonderful learning community that Crown was for us and can be for today's Crownies.
