Initiatives and News

Kinnears Contribute $100,000 to Establish
CEW Community Counseling Fund

Connie and Tom Kinnear’s recent gift of $100,000 honors their long-time association with CEW and our shared value in the importance of higher education. Several years ago, former CEW Director Carol Hollenshead invited Connie to help select the finalists for the Center’s annual scholarship awards. That experience, as well as her membership on CEW’s Leadership Council, had a powerful impact on Connie, motivating her and her husband Tom to support CEW with their donations.
 

“When I hear the life stories of some of the CEW scholars, so different from mine, I realize how fortunate I have been. The strength of women to overcome obstacles that have been put in their lives is inspiring. So, given the opportunity, why wouldn’t I give back to CEW as an organization that does so much to change women’s lives?”
Connie also supports CEW because of her belief in the social and economic value of education. “Why education?” she says. “Because if we were able to educate our population well, we would solve most of the other problems our country faces. Education, to me, is the foundation for a life that’s meaningful, productive, and economically secure.” “I feel very strongly,” Connie continues, “that all of CEW’s programs are drastically needed. They make a most important level of change for each and every individual who’s lucky enough to come in contact with CEW.”

Connie’s current gift is intended to support community outreach in the form of counseling. “A lot of the people who come in for counseling are looking to get back into education,” she explains, “or they wouldn’t come to an organization attached to the University of Michigan. We are doing the University a service with community counseling, getting people the right information, getting them the right skill sets to be able to apply and become students or University staff personnel. It’s a valuable service.”

Join with others to continue this important work.

Inspired by the cause of community counseling and Connie and Tom’s Kinnear’s commitment to this long-standing CEW service, other CEW donors have begun contributing to the counseling fund. Be a part of this effort. Give online or directly to CEW at 330 East Liberty, Ann Arbor, MI 48104. For more information or questions, please call Mary Lynn Stevens at 734.764.7291, or email her at malyhe@umich.edu
  

Riecker Challenge Gift Strengthens CEW’s Ability to Support Emerging Graduate Student Researchers

Ranny Riecker, a long-time supporter who shares the Center’s commitment to research, issued a challenge gift up to $200,000 to establish the Riecker Graduate Student Research Fund. The fund, and its dollar-for-dollar matching challenge, increases CEW’s ability to support budding scholars.

Whether you are a first-time or regular benefactor, this challenge is a wonderful opportunity to make a difference on two levels: by providing essential financial support to bring motivated scholars into the Center and by ensuring that the Center continues to gather relevant data on such complex, contemporary, and gender-related issues as access to employment and education, work-life balance, equity, and diversity.

Join the Riecker Challenge! To learn more, please email Gloria Thomas
gthomas@umich.edu or call her at 734.764.6005.

Leadership Initiative

CEW will launch an Emerging Leaders Initiative in the Spring/Summer of 2011! In creating a leadership development program that focuses on the next generation, cew is focusing on emerging women leaders who are relatively early in their careers and who have been recognized for or want to develop their leadership abilities.

Collaborating with experts at the University of Michigan, in State-wide communities, and across the nation, CEW has designed an initiative that is accessible, both financially and geographically. CEW would like to offer the program each year in a different area of the state. Our goal is to raise $500,000 for endowment from private benefactors, so the program can continue in perpetuity.

Robin Wright Graduate Fellowship

CEW awarded the Robin Wright Graduate Fellowship for the first time in Spring, 2010. An internationally esteemed print and television journalist, an expert and historian on the Middle East, and a University of Michigan alumna, Robin Wright funded this award to support the work of a U-M graduate student from Africa or the Islamic World.

Robin Wright has reported from more than one hundred and forty countries, but her primary passion and expertise is the Middle East, about which she has written four books. Wright’s CEW Fellowship highlights her commitment to research on contemporary international and global issues, especially those related to political, economic, or societal change in the Middle East and to new solutions for issues arising from the spread of globalization.

In order to assure optimal direct impact, the terms of the Robin Wright Graduate Fellowship place high priority on women graduate students who conduct their research abroad and who intend to return to their home countries to contribute their scholarly and professional skills. Wright believes that women are agents of change in the Middle East, and the Robin Wright Graduate Fellowship is another way that she is supporting those efforts.

Recent CEW Newsletters

See our recent newsletters for more information on the activities of CEW profiles of Leadership Council members, stories of participants in our counseling and programs, and those benefitting from CEW advocacy and research.