The campaign encouraged key investments in scholarships, career and professional development, and related areas to help our students explore, create, and pursue their dream paths. Select investments in our People helped to create:
- Scholarships: $26.6M
- New Endowed Scholarships: 52
- Career Exploration: $1.5M
The Power of Scholarships
Bailey Smith '24 exemplifies this power of investing in scholarships. Smith, a nursing major from Frederick, Maryland, is now spending the summer gaining hands-on experience and shadowing professionals in an organ transplant unit through Medstar Georgetown University Hospital’s Student Nurse Technician Externship program.
"This externship is enhancing the knowledge and skills that I’ve learned in Wittenberg's nursing program so far," she said. "It's also giving me a lot of exposure to different specialties because they offer shadow opportunities to all the students."
Additionally, Smith is discovering how to balance the lifestyle of being a nurse while working 12-hour shifts, as well as about post-operative care, organ systems, and medications for organ transplant patients.
By broadening opportunities for vocational discernment, internships, and engagement, both on-campus and off, the campaign has helped countless students grow, learn, and thrive as they prepare to lead in the careers and communities.
Pitching tents, digging latrines, wielding a chainsaw, and traveling by smokejumper plane were all part of a typical work day last for another scholarship recipient, Olivia Lawrence ‘23. She participated in the first-ever all-women conservation corps fire crew in Alaska hosted by the National Park Service last summer. The opportunity, encouraged by Amber Burgett, former associate professor of biology, along with her collaborative research with John Ritter, professor of geology and director of environmental science, has since changed the first-generation student’s life.
Because Wittenberg is a smaller school, Lawrence said it was easier “to learn and to experience things here,” noting that when she did field work, the experience was more rewarding because it was more hands-on with a professor. Such work also prepared her for actual field work and for any job she wants to pursue. Lawrence is currently assisting with controlling the ongoing, deadly Canadian wildfires.
Power of Experiential Learning in Career Success
Having light, the campaign also made our education more affordable and accessible, allowing other students to discern their purpose, develop meaningful, lifelong connections with faculty, staff and coaches, as well as further the common good in their future careers, and as local citizens and members of the global community.
Because of such generosity, programs such as the new and highly popular FIRE Week were able to triple the number of participants, ensuring that our students could engage in-depth with faculty and staff on diverse topics focused on such areas as water rights in California, start-ups in Texas, community partnerships in Ohio, and so much more. The possibilities are as rich and varied as the people at Wittenberg, and all were made possible thanks to the generous support of alumni and friends.
