Or help an aspiring astronaut reach the heavens? How would you like to put an actor on the stage? Or simply offer a deserving student a chance to be the first in her family to earn a university degree?

    No gift does more to make the dream of a UB education a reality for students throughout the university than your gift to support educational enhancement. By providing scholarships for undergraduate and graduate students, not only can you make a student’s dream come true; just as important, you can enhance the quality of UB’s programs and help the university recruit some of the nation’s best and brightest students.

    Thanks to an anonymous donor, one gift that keeps on giving in both these ways now totals $5.6 million. This gift funds scholarships for exceptional UB undergraduates, allowing the university to attract these highly motivated students. According to the donor, “The primary goal of renewing this gift is to support bright students for whom college might not otherwise be affordable and to encourage other donors to support this important priority.”

    But undergraduate students aren’t the only ones who benefit from gifts like this. A sense of gratitude and a desire to reinvest in the community inspired a similar $1 million gift from John and Janet Sung. Their gift provides scholarships for UB medical students who, in addition to outstanding academic performance and financial need, demonstrate “a genuine, caring attitude, generosity of spirit and leadership potential.” Along with helping promising medical students, the gift is intended to foster another dream of the Sungs—to train and retain talented young doctors who will bring national recognition to UB and Western New York.

    Gifts for educational enhancement can also enrich campus life, providing a stimulating, exciting learning environment both inside and outside the classroom. Two long-time UB benefactors created the Don and Esther Davis Fund with a gift of $600,000 to support UB’s Mini Medical School, a program designed to help students and members of the university community from every discipline understand the science behind today’s astounding medical advances.

    Every gift to educational enhancement, no matter what size, creates a real, immediate and wide-reaching impact. For students whose education is made possible by your support, the opportunity to study at UB and earn a degree is a once-in-a-lifetime chance that opens up new possibilities for the rest of their lives. And as those students embark on a lifetime of achievement, their accomplishments will become part of UB’s reputation and tradition, and an indelible and rewarding part of your life, too.