Students and alumnae/i work to Mind the Gap
On Thursday, February 7, Vassar hosted the first annual Mind the Gap Day to call attention to the point in the academic year when revenue from tuition, room, and board no longer covers the cost of educating each student at the college. For the rest of the academic year, the day-to-day operation of the campus – everything from paying faculty to teach, to shoveling the sidewalks – is possible in large part because of gifts to the college from alumnae/i, parents, and friends of Vassar, past and present.
As part of Mind the Gap Day, some two dozen Vassar alumnae/i and volunteers returned to campus to experience firsthand the results of their giving. Together with current Vassar students, they each attended two to three classes, explored the campus, and heard addresses by Emily Cogswell ’07, who first suggested the idea for Mind the Gap Day on the Vassar campus while a student intern, and Laurie Schwab Zabin ‘46, winner of AAVC’s 2008 Distinguished Achievement Award. Other students also participated in the day by writing thank-you notes to alumnae/i for their support of the college (more than 150 notes in all) and by entering a raffle in which they had to guess how many donors gave to Vassar last year (the answer is 13,112; the winner came within 300 of the correct total).
Mind the Gap Day is organized by the Council for Alumnae/i-Student Advancement (CASA), a coalition designed to increase communication between AAVC, the Development Office, the Office of Career Development, and the student body. CASA seeks to raise awareness of the short- and long-term goals of AAVC, Development, Career Development, Student Affairs, and the college, and provide a continuum between life as a student and life as an alumna/us. Through programming initiatives geared toward the student body, it also works to promote a culture of philanthropy on campus.
For more information about Mind the Gap Day, contact Susan F. Sheehan, Director of Reunion and Class Giving.