Hi Clair.
My name is Beth Bliss. It's nice to meet
you.
I'm a Class of '84 grad,
which doesn't seem like it was that
long ago, but I guess it was a little
while ago.
My husband Jarl is also
Class of '84. We met at JMU our junior
year.
I have a recent 2020 graduate, Mackenzie.
She graduated from the College of
Business with a degree in accounting and
is actually returning this fall
for her master's in accountancy, so we
have a little legacy
of JMU. It's been
really awesome to be engaged with JMU,
and I would have to say in 1984, I never
thought that we would be this engaged.
I wouldn't reverse it. I think
it's just been wonderful and been really
great to meet
all different generations of graduates.
So I'm looking forward to talking to you
today
and finding out a little bit about you.
Oh, well thank you. It's nice to hear about you and
congratulations to your daughter for
graduating. That's super, super exciting.
Well, my name is Clair Blacketer. I
graduated in
2010 with a degree in biology
and I was also a member of the Psi
chapter of Alpha Sigma Tau.
So that is kind of I'm an alumni in two
ways of
JMU, as well as AST, which was really
fun. I was really fortunate to
be a recipient of the Madison for Keeps
scholarship.
My dad had some health problems
and he was unable to return to work that
year,
and there was also some issues because
of the recession with his work.
So I got this scholarship that allowed
me to stay at JMU, which was absolutely
amazing.
And through my senior year, actually, I
figured out I didn't want to be a doctor
like i thought. I wanted to be an
epidemiologist, which
I wouldn't have known unless I had been
able to stay at JMU. So
it was a really wonderful experience to
feel that community and that sense of
belonging
to the university. Yeah, I probably
wouldn't have been able to stay
at JMU for my senior year, and I really
wouldn't have
discovered epidemiology and that was
really the career path I wanted to take.
So I took that course my senior year
as one of my last biology courses, and I
fell in love with it.
And really, I like to think
of
myself as kind of a poster child for
what scholarships can do for students.
So and the way I understand it, I
think Women for Madison have a really
great announcement
this week for a scholarship program,
right?
Yes, Clair, you know what, you are a
wonderful example
of the value of scholarships and the
impact that they can make
for a student. And Women for Madison
this is this is exactly what we are
striving to do, and that is support our
students.
And so during this week of giving
for every woman who makes a donation
of any size, of any amount,
the advisory council for Women for
Madison, which
I'm just rolling off of, will make a $25
gift to student scholarships for up to
$25,000, which will be significant to
help us
with our students. So I hope that we
can inspire and motivate and bring
our fellow females female alumni
together
to pitch in for this effort and really
make a difference for our students
who are there at JMU today and also
maybe inspire some giving behavior and
philanthropy for later on.
Well, that's fantastic. That's really,
really exciting.
I definitely know I'm going to be giving,
and I think it's just a wonderful
program that that you guys are rolling
out this week,
and hopefully many other people will
participate and we can get to that
$25,000
really, really quickly.
