Now, that's a truly inspiring account.

By Karen Feldscher

It was my alma mater, back in Ohio. I knew what they wanted.

You've gotten those calls, too—from Northeastern. You've heard the buoyant voice on the other end of the line talking about the progress the university has made, thanking you for your past gift, asking if you can give again. And you've thought, Should I say I have something burning in the oven?

For me, however, that night was different. Because I suddenly remembered what I'd been hearing at work about Northeastern—about the large and small victories that have been won with Leadership Campaign donations.

About the young woman who got a full-tuition scholarship, for instance, which led to a computer-science degree. Today, she's working on her PhD, hoping one day to create the kind of technology that people don't just use because they have to, but because they love to.

The couple who, to memorialize their son, established a fund that brings literary lights to campus.

The alum who helped a student get an education, a co-op job, and a career.

And the jump-start funding that created a new school that teaches students how to launch and manage cutting-edge companies.

The stories I'd been hearing had touched some emotion in me. And so, to the well-meaning voice on the line, I said, "Sure, I'll give."

Northeastern has hundreds of compelling examples of how contributions to the recently completed Leadership Campaign are helping the university's students, scholars, and schools surge forward. Almost all began with a phone call and a request.

Since 1998, the campaign has raised more than $203 million from more than 63,900 alumni, friends, corporations, and foundations. Some contributions were substantial gifts that have already led to big changes on campus. The Behrakis Health Sciences Center owes its existence to an $8 million commitment from George D. Behrakis, P'57, H'98, and his wife, Margo. Shillman Hall, a classroom building, was named following a $3 million gift from Robert Shillman, E'68, H'00, and his wife, Mao.

There have been other large donations as well—from George Kostas, E'43, and his wife, Angelina, which helped fund the Kostas Nanoscale Technology and Manufacturing Research Center. From Irving Levine, E'57, and his wife, Lenore, which named the Levine Marketplace, a restaurant-style dining area in Stetson East. From Francis Gicca, E'59, and his wife, Joan, which named the atrium in the new College of Computer and Information Science building. And from Morton Ruderman, E'59, and his wife, Marcia, which greatly enhanced the Jewish studies program.

But thousands of small gifts made a difference, too. In fact, the university surpassed its $200 million goal on the shoulders of a large variety of gifts.

"This was a real university-wide collective effort," says senior vice president for institutional advancement Robert Cunningham, "with more gifts at all levels helping us reach the goal."

The combined force of all these contributions, the very large to the very small, creates a lasting impact on Northeastern, Cunningham adds. "Whether it's been through the annual fund or other types of giving opportunities," he says, "the campaign gave alumni a chance to engage with Northeastern in a very meaningful way. It has really helped create connections among alumni, students, and faculty."

According to Cunningham, it's clear alumni care deeply about providing for student support and financial aid.

President Freeland agrees. "The single most compelling reason that motivates many donors," he says, "is a desire to make sure that the next generation has the opportunity to attend Northeastern in the same way that our successful graduates have."

Ronald Rossetti, BA'66, the Leadership Campaign chair and one of several trustees to make a $1 million donation to help kick off the fundraising effort, echoes Cunningham and Freeland. "We are keeping our promise to our students to provide the best educational experience possible," he says.

In the wake of the campaign, promises made can be promises kept. And individual contributions, including those that by themselves might not pack a lot of punch, provide building blocks for a dynamic big picture, one that can change people's lives.

Call it the wow factor.

A star is born

Had Andrea Grimes, CS'05, followed her first passion, she would have been a music major. She likes to play the piano and sing, and her father is a pastor of music at a California church.

Instead, she followed her mother's advice to study something more practical. "I took a programming class in high school," Grimes remembers, "and I thought, 'This is fun.' And my parents had friends who worked at IBM and Intel, and I got to shadow them when I was in high school." A career in the digital world, she says, "seemed like a cool thing to do." She decided to become a software engineer.

As a senior in high school, Grimes was accepted at Princeton. But Northeastern wanted the high-achiever, too, and was able to offer her a variety of scholarship funds, including, ultimately, a Presidential Scholarship. Through the Leadership Campaign, alumni and friends created about $44.5 million in scholarship funds.

In the end, Grimes chose Northeastern. It wasn't just the scholarship money that sealed the deal; it was also the people at the College of Computer and Information Science. "They seemed really excited about having me come," says Grimes.

Plus, she says, "I really liked the idea of co-op. And they told me I could start on research right away."

It took her a few years to find an aspect of computer science she was really passionate about. Finally, she did: how to make computers, and technology in general, easier for people to work with.

Today, Grimes is a student in the Georgia Institute of Technology's PhD program in human-centered computing. Ultimately, she may want to work in an industry research lab, where the focus reaches beyond making a product to analyzing how potential users would interact with that product.

"I'm not really interested in developing the next gadget that people will use in the next couple of months and then get sick of," she says. "I would like to help improve people's lives."

Actually, she already has. At Northeastern, working with associate professor Robert Futrelle, Grimes helped create software that pinpoints language patterns in biology text, to give biologists a better tool for searching databases. Later, she helped assistant professor Peter Tarasewich study privacy issues related to mobile devices.

As everyone predicted, Grimes was an academic star on Huntington Avenue. She had the highest GPA in her class three years running, co-authored several research papers, and attended international conferences. Her senior year, she was named the outstanding woman undergraduate in the nation by the Computing Research Association. The male winner was from MIT; runners-up included students from Carnegie Mellon, Brown, Columbia, Berkeley, and Harvard.

Grimes also taught an introductory computer-technology skills class to low-income adults in Dorchester. She says she realized "most computer software is not developed with these types of people in mind. A lot of the things I taught them were very counterintuitive." As a result, she found herself gravitating toward the human side of computing—"thinking from the user's perspective," she says.

The Georgia Tech doctoral program offers her the perfect interdisciplinary mix. In addition to human-computer interaction, she's studying sociology, anthropology, cognitive science, and the philosophy of technology. "We're learning more about how people work, how people work together, and how technology can better fit within society," she says.

For example, Grimes is exploring how technology can help African Americans improve their dietary habits. Traditional forms of nutritional support,

such as brochures, don't always work well in the African American community, she notes, because they may trigger feelings of cultural isolation.

But technology-based options, such as video games, video soap operas, or interactive television, could use culturally specific approaches to tout the benefits of cutting down on fatty foods or eating whole grains.

"People don't realize all the capabilities of computer science," says Grimes. "We can do so much more than just write things for people's Palm Pilots."

Lasting legacy for a lost son

In the days just after September 11, as English professor Stuart Peterfreund read the names of the passengers on the hijacked planes, he realized one name was naggingly familiar: Peter Hanson.

Then he remembered that Hanson, AS'91, had taken several of his classes.

Hanson was onboard United Airlines Flight 175, the second plane to crash into the World Trade Center. The thirty-two-year-old vice president of sales for TimeTrade—a Waltham, Massachusetts, company that specialized in web-based scheduling services—was traveling with his wife, Sue, a Boston University medical student, and their three-year-old daughter, Christine.

Peterfreund, shaken by his realization, had a bad dream that night. When he woke, he decided to put shape to his grief by writing a poem. Later, he sent it to Peter's parents, Lee and Eunice Hanson.

"It was a beautiful poem," says Lee, BA'55. "Like many messages you get from people after you lose someone you love, it offered a different side of Peter's character, [this one] from the viewpoint of an instructor. It went into the kinds of books Peter read, the kind of thoughts he had. It was very striking and very beautiful."

Moved by Peterfreund's effort, the Hansons decided to create two endowments for the College of Arts and Sciences in Peter's name. One boosted the monetary prize for an annual undergraduate writing contest. The other funds an annual presentation on campus by a noted writer; the first visitor was poet Rosanna Warren, daughter of late literary lion Robert Penn Warren.

Hanson says he and his wife believe giving money to educational causes is the perfect way to remember Peter, Sue, and Christine. "A fundraiser once told me that nothing is permanent," he explains. "You can set up a memorial, and maybe someday it won't be there.

"But if you give money for something at a university, then you know a lot of students are going to learn from that. And that can influence the way they do things for the rest of their lives."

Two peas in a pod

Like many connections, theirs is one that is rooted in commonality.

Peter Ogren, E'69, and Marissa Sordillo, E'04, both majored in civil engineering. They're both from the North Shore. Each of their co-op stints was spent at Hayes Engineering, in Wakefield, Massachusetts, and they both went on to full-time jobs at the firm.

There are a few differences, of course. Ogren has worked at Hayes several decades longer than Sordillo. "I'm still on my co-op job," he says, laughing. And he started with the firm back when its founder and president, George Hayes, LI'50, now deceased, employed only a handful of people. Today, it's more than forty people strong.

One more thing: Sordillo is an engineer at Hayes. Ogren is the company's owner and current president.

Ogren met Sordillo her freshman year when he decided to help fund the Legacy Scholarship program, which offers worthy students $5,000 a year for tuition over their entire college careers. She was one of the students so honored.

"Most of our practicing engineers here at Hayes are graduates of Northeastern," Ogren says, "so we thought it would be a good thing to support."

After a lunch held to introduce the Legacy Scholars to their sponsors, Ogren invited Sordillo out to Hayes for a tour. Next thing she knew, he was offering her a co-op job, then another, and another.

"Obviously, over time Marissa became a valuable employee," says Ogren. "Then we asked if she'd like to come full time."

The answer: A resounding yes.

"When I started [as a co-op] at Hayes, I had no experience in engineering," Sordillo says. "But I started working on real projects right away. I learned everything I know at Northeastern and Hayes."

Ogren, a Northeastern overseer, points out that Sordillo has already worked on some fairly complex site designs, including a thirty-seven-unit condo project in North Andover. "The client was very complimentary of her abilities," he says proudly.

Efforts like the Legacy Scholarship program are important, Ogren believes, because they encourage students with sterling academic backgrounds to choose Northeastern over less-expensive state colleges. Indeed, Sordillo says she had originally considered some less-pricey options herself.

But "the scholarship really made a difference," Sordillo says. "Northeastern was my first choice."

Start them up

Middler Jason Evanish wants to have his own business someday.

And, even though his major is electrical engineering, he's confident he's going to have the entrepreneurial know-how he needs. That's because he's minoring in technological entrepreneurship at a new school made possible by a university trustee's gift.

The School for Technological Entrepreneurship helps students learn how to turn good business ideas into viable high-tech products or services. This kind of multidisciplinary effort is tailor-made for Northeastern, which has a long history as a launching pad for entrepreneurs.

Trustee Jean Tempel, a venture capitalist at First Light Capital, thought the school was such a good idea that she infused it with $1.5 million of her own money.

In a way, the year-old school is itself a start-up. Paul Zavracky, LA'71, MS'75, returned to campus in September to serve as the school's first dean. A former Northeastern electrical engineering professor, Zavracky had left his faculty post in 1998 to run his own company.

Other schools, such as the University of Pennsylvania and Lehigh University, offer students with entrepreneurial inclinations dual degrees in business and engineering. But Northeastern has created the first freestanding school that will eventually grant both degrees and certificates in technological entrepreneurship. "This school is one of a kind," says Zavracky.

Along with the minor, the School for Technological Entrepreneurship will soon offer a graduate certificate and a master's degree. It won't draw just business and engineering students; it will also attract students from the health sciences and the liberal arts who are interested in creating and marketing new tools, gadgets, or services.

In fact, Zavracky says, Northeastern decided to create a stand-alone entity for the study of technological entrepreneurship because the field doesn't fit neatly into the standard engineering or business curriculum.

"Starting technological companies is typically done by technologists," he says, "and really requires a huge amount of understanding of the technologies involved. Nothing in the business school can help you there.

"On the other hand," Zavracky continues, "technology companies are businesses, and there's a lot that needs to be understood about running a business. And the engineering school can't help a lot with that."

Classes in the new school are taught by faculty from engineering and business as well as arts and sciences, health sciences, and computer and information sciences. Soon, Zavracky hopes to hire new professors, create endowed chairs, and bring in experienced technological entrepreneurs to speak to students.

For now, Evanish and his classmates are soaking up the interdisciplinary approach to outlining a vision and making it fly. He's convinced of the practicality of what he's been learning: balance sheets, market research, business plans.

"The minor is giving me the tools to wrap around my ideas," he says.

Actually, this is an appropriate metaphor for the entire Leadership Campaign and all ongoing Northeastern fundraising efforts, like the annual-giving program. Reaching across boundaries and around barriers, they help people find what they need to build their dreams and soar.

Remember that the next time you get one of those early-evening phone calls.

Karen Feldscher is a senior writer.