June 4, 2024

Librarians’ Legacy Gifts Help Library Employees Pursue UW Degrees

As a UW Libraries employee for 24 years, one of Janet Pliske’s interests was helping others to learn and grow in their jobs and career paths. After retiring in 2000, Janet kept in touch with many library colleagues and fellow retirees. Sadly, Janet passed away late last year. Upon her passing, we learned that Janet included UW Libraries in her estate plan, which provided seed funding to establish the Libraries Professional Development Endowed Fund. This new endowment, combined with continued annual donations, significantly expands the scholarship opportunities for Library staff who are currently pursuing degrees at UW, doubling the number of employee scholarships available and raising the minimum scholarship amount from $500 to $2,000 per recipient.  The first round of UW Libraries RenewU scholarships funded through the new endowment were just awarded this month (May 2024).

Hannah Mendro, Materials Processing Technician Lead for UW Campus Library for UW Bothell and Cascadia College, received the award in 2023 while working on her Masters of Arts in Cultural Studies. “I received the RenewU scholarship during my master’s degree, taken while working full time at the UW Libraries and looking for every bit of help I could find,” said Mendro.  “While the RenewU scholarship was not enough to pay for my degree, it contributed that much more to my financial aid, and provided some additional, much needed flexibility.  More than that, it meant so much to know that there were people who supported my learning and development as a person, that I had the opportunity to continue to grow and pursue my goals, and that my desire to do so would be seen as a positive thing for the organization, rather than a challenge to overcome. I am thrilled about the expansion of this endowment and incredibly grateful to its donors, and I hope that it inspires other Libraries staff to take advantage of the university’s resources and potential for learning.”

The RenewU scholarship was originally created in 2012 through a generous annual donation from retiring UW Librarian, Martha A. Tucker. Since its inception, RenewU has provided 19 scholarships to UW Libraries employees. Any UW Libraries employee who is working at least 50% time and enrolled in a UW degree program at UW Seattle, Bothell or Tacoma is eligible.

Martha offers her enthusiasm for the RenewU scholarship,

“I was delighted to hear of Janet’s endowment in support of UW Libraries employees’ higher education. Together with the RenewU fund, UW Libraries employees who are also UW students can now apply for more substantial financial assistance in their pursuit of further education.”

Martha began UW Libraries work as a student in the Slavic Section around 1975, then as staff in the Slavic Section, ILL, and finally Gov Docs. She earned her MLS at UW while working in the Libraries, and became the librarian in the Mathematics Research Library from 1983 until 2012. Martha was drawn to support employees much like herself once the tuition structure changed and many degrees, like the MLIS required to be a librarian, were no longer free for state employees.  

While employees who receive the scholarship are often pursuing masters degrees in library and information science, scholarship recipients represent a variety of disciplines, with past students working toward masters and Ph.D. programs in business, bioinformatics, and other arts and sciences fields.   

The new endowment reflects UW Libraries commitment to enhancing professional growth and development opportunities for all employees. Working part or full-time while going to school is a challenging balance, made more difficult by financial constraints. Within the university, employee-based scholarship opportunities like this have become even more important with the decline of eligible programs for tuition exemption for employees. This is one of several university endowments that invest in professional development for staff.

As the endowment grows, the Libraries plans to continue expanding the number of annual scholarships, offering awards twice per year, in the spring and fall quarters.  If you would like to learn more about how you can contribute to this new endowment, planned giving or other ways to support UW Libraries, please check out THIS LINK for more information or contact Sheryl Stiefel, Assistant Dean of University Libraries for Advancement sstiefel@uw.edu  or 206-685-1973.

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