Continue to Make a Difference

A gift is a personal gesture, reflecting the loyalty, affection and interests of the giver. Gifts to the Psychology Department are also personal. Sometimes they reflect loyalty built during an experience as a student, a researcher, a member of the faculty or staff . Gifts may express gratitude for a particular experience, for the department in general, or for an individual mentor, instructor, student, staff member, faculty member, or colleague. Or a gift may emerge from a desire to see progress made in a particular area of research. Our website provides information about the research interests of our faculty and potential donors may find particular themes of research ripe for funding.

There are many avenues to support the Department of Psychology, and all gifts are appreciated. At the present time, the Psychology Department Strategic Fund and the Undergraduate Research Fund are high priority efforts; our website lists other funds as well, at http://www.lsa.umich.edu/psych/alumni/giving/.

You may send a contribution to these or other funds. To request more information, please contact us at psych.giving@umich.edu. We are happy to discuss ways that your gift can further the efforts to fulfill the Psychology Department’s mission. We also welcome volunteers for our Psychology Ambassadors Program, designed to bring together alumni who live in the same area. There are over 17,000 active alumni from the Department of Psychology. Help us make the Psychology Ambassadors Program a success.

About the Funds

Psychology Department Strategic Fund

The ability to respond in a timely manner is critical to any organization. The strategic fund provides resources for the department’s focused initiatives. The fund facilitates the creation of new undergraduate courses based on important current events (such as a course on the Psychology of Terrorism or Psychological Aspects of Globalization) and facilitates the purchase of specialized equipment for new courses (such as the kind needed for a course on the use of psychophysiological techniques). The fund permits a focused response to innovative opportunities that build on the talents of our faculty and the interdisciplinary strength at the University of Michigan, such as joint faculty hires with Women’s Studies or research with the School of Engineering on optimal user-centered product design. The strategic fund also facilities a departmental response to the recruitment and retention of the best faculty and graduate students. The Strategic Fund provides resources for the development of new research projects, which require preliminary results (“pilot data”) in order to mount a competitive proposal for federal and nonfederal grant support. This fund is an excellent way to make an investment in the future of the Department of Psychology.

Undergraduate Research Fund

We are proud that research is a major cornerstone of our undergraduate curriculum. Undergraduate psychology students are actively involved in research projects—in many cases those projects lead to important results that appear in conference presentations or in published articles. In April 2005, 20 of our undergraduates attended the international meetings of the Society for Research on Child Development in Atlanta, Georgia. This fund facilitated travel expenses for those 20 students. One student commented “going to the SRCD convention was a great experience for me as an undergraduate student.” The support of undergraduate research projects is becoming increasingly important as graduate schools across the country require some form of research experience for admission.

 

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