As many of you will remember, last Spring we began fundraising for the Elaine Kruse Scholarship Fund. To commemorate Elaine's retirement, we wanted to provide a fund that would keep alive her legacy as a mentor of student learning. Given Elaine's passion for research, it seemed apt to create an endowed fund that would disperse money each year to support student research.

Each year students develop research projects for their senior theses that involve archival sources at some distance from campus. For example, last year Evan Knight pursued a study of resistance in French Catalonia during World War II which necessitated travel to Perpignon, France. This year Jacki Smith is involved with a senior thesis on Eleanor Roosevelt's work in education reform that is based on research in archives in New York State. In both cases funds were scraped together to support the travel. In other instances student sneed to acquire microfilm or digitized copies of archival resources.

More and more the institution is promoting student research across all disciplines, making Wesleyan students more competitive for postgraduate prestige scholarships or entry into competitive graduate schools. History has attracted excellent students over the years, and we hope to provide them the opportunity to engage in ambitious research, and achieve ambitious goals.

We have set a goal of $25,000 for the initial endowment of the fund before we start disbursing yearly grants to students. We are more than halfway there. We are including, as you will note, an envelope with which you can send a contribution. We are asking that you consider giving a gift (or giving again) so that next year we can report back on achieving our goal, and in the years that follow we will be reporting back on what great work students have been doing with your largesse.