‘Giving’ Before Getting

Sophomore year at Maryland meant more than just a better understanding of the best place to study in McKeldin Library or the fastest route across campus for Tanay Wakhare ’20. His second year on campus brought him the opportunity to teach a course himself.

“Mathematics of Ramanujan,” about an Indian pioneer in number theory, is a Student Initiated Course (STIC), an initiative that allows students to propose and teach one- or two-credit classes tailored to their interests. It’s one of 15 projects at the university that donors can support today as part of Giving Tuesday.

An antidote to the consumerism that pervades the holiday season, Giving Tuesday is a national movement that since 2012 has encouraged people to donate, volunteer or otherwise give back to their community after the buying frenzies of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Last year, the Giving Tuesday organization estimates that contributions totaled roughly $400 million worldwide.

UMD’s 15 projects began raising funds on Sunday and will continue until Thursday at 11:59 p.m. Potential donors “have the ability to scroll through different projects and support whatever is dearest to their hearts,” said Araba Samassekou, annual giving manager. 

Each school or college—as well as several other units—is focused on an individual project, ranging from the Terp Dream Crisis Fund in the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, which supports first-generation college students, to the Student Veteran Professional Development Fund in the Office of Student Affairs. 

The School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation is boosting the Kibel Gallery Endowment Operating Fund, which supports the school’s home for exhibitions from architects, designers, planners and preservationists. An exhibit in the spring will focus on the Holodomor Memorial in Washington, D.C., designed by Larysa Kurylas ’80 to commemorate the genocide by famine in Ukraine that killed 4 million people in the 1930s.

“We’re hoping this will broaden people’s understandings of how architects and planners and preservationists affect built environment,” said architecture Professor Brian Kelly, emphasizing that the gallery’s exhibits are “of great value both educationally and in a more public interest vein.”

Chelsea Torres contributed to this story.