Shirley Phillips, B.S.'67, M.S.'70

Shirley Phillips, B.S.’67, M.S.’70, says she was “very fortunate” to be able to go to the University at Albany. “When I graduated from high school, I didn’t have the funds to go to college, and I went to work instead.” As a secretary and an office manager for 20 years, Phillips found her work “fascinating.” But she never relinquished her dream: to earn a college degree so that she could fulfill one of her early goals — to teach.

In her late 30s, Phillips enrolled at UAlbany, studying through the summers so that she could complete her degree requirements in three years. “It was convenient for me, and the tuition was reasonable,” she recalls. Later, while teaching full time at Mercy High School in Albany and then at Albany Business College, Phillips attended night courses at the University to earn her master’s. She has been retired from the Junior College of Albany faculty since the late 1980s and lives in Albany.

Phillips acknowledged that her course of study was “a little bit hectic and daunting sometimes, but I would emphasize that I found my teachers a great inspiration. They were always willing to put in extra time to assist me, and their dedication was a great example to me in my own teaching career.”

Phillips said the charitable gift annuity she established offers a number of advantages. “I have the opportunity to take charitable deductions on my income tax. Since it’s an annuity, I am able to obtain some income from that investment, just as if I were putting it into a bank or stocks and drawing interest each year. I have income and a tax break. And the University has unrestricted monies to use.”

Evelyn Freudenreich, B.S.’37, who majored in mathematics and minored in business at UAlbany, later taught both subjects in Capital Region schools. She credits her professors at “the old New York State College for Teachers” for her professional success. “We had to know the subjects we were going to teach, but we also had to know how to teach,” Freudenreich recalls.

In her junior year at Albany, Freudenreich took a course that taught her “how to work with the kids and be effective in the classroom.” The lessons she learned served her well the following year, when she began student teaching, and throughout her 21-year career. In her classroom, “my students knew where they stood. I wanted them to like me, but they had to respect me first. They had to have their work done and pay attention in class. I found that following these rules made a big difference in their conduct,” notes Freudenreich, who began teaching in Saugerties and is now retired from the Guilderland School District in suburban Albany.

While Freudenreich spent her career teaching high school, she was also thinking about ways to help students at the University.

The opportunity arose when the Delmar native set up charitable gift annuities honoring her late husband, Carl J. Freudenreich, whom she met and married when both were young teachers.

Evelyn Freudenreich, B.S.'37

Freudenreich remembers that, as a student at Albany, “we didn’t have to pay tuition.” That was just as well, since “my mother couldn’t afford to pay anything.” A Regents scholarship covered the cost of Freudenreich’s textbooks, and she worked part-time in the cafeteria annex and at Sherry’s department store in downtown Albany to earn pocket money.

“When Carl died, I thought, ‘He was such a good teacher and so interested in the profession that he would have liked to help young people who want to go into the teaching field but don’t have enough money to do it.’ ” The annuities in his name provide support for School of Education students who intend to become teachers.

Alice Hastings Murphy, M.A.’70, and her family are “Albany” through and through. Her parents, Harry W. and Louise C. Hastings, met while teaching English at Albany in 1914. Murphy and her brother Henry grew up on the downtown campus and earned master’s degrees in English here. And their cousin, Thomson Hastings Littlefield, is a retired English Department professor.

Alice Hastings Murphy, M.a.'70

After receiving her M.L.S. from Columbia, Murphy returned to Albany in 1948 to work for the University Libraries, serving as director of the Libraries during the institution’s transformation from teachers’ college to major public research university. Retired since 1970, Murphy lives in Delmar and remains active with the Friends of the Libraries.

“Albany has always been a top-notch institution – the best in the world,” Murphy said. “The charitable gift annuity is a way of investing my money so that it goes to a good cause. Of course, there’s a tax incentive, too.”

Murphy and her family have also been honored by her colleagues. The Alice Hastings Murphy Scholarship supports students planning careers in librarianship, while the Harry W. and Louise C. Hastings Fund benefits the University Libraries. Murphy also contributes to both funds.