This issue of UAlbany magazine is devoted to thanking the thousands of University at Albany friends, alumni, parents and partners who made gifts totaling nearly $18 million during 1999-2000. These people, firms and foundations have made an enormous difference in the quality of learning, research and outreach at this remarkable institution. With State funds providing only about a quarter of the University’s annual operating budget, private gifts can constitute the margin of excellence.

Ada Craig Walker, the inspiration for one of the University’s earliest endowments, was a member of the Class of 1871. She passed away in 1924, when the University was about half its present age. But the endowment bequest her son, Captain William John Walker, established in her memory has been part of the lives of generations of UAlbany students.

In many ways, Mrs. Walker was a woman ahead of her time. After graduating from Albany Normal School when Ulysses S. Grant was president of the United States, Ada Craig taught school for nearly a decade before marrying an Albany businessman. Both as a teacher and later as a wife, a mother and an involved citizen, Ada Craig Walker built a reputation for orderliness and progressive thought. She was a pioneer in racial tolerance, donating money to the new black colleges springing up in the South. Ada was also known as a friend of the Shaker religious society here. She was a loyal alumna, and passed her interest in the Normal School on to her son.

In 1904, Mrs. Walker was left to raise five children as a 49-year-old widow. A quarter century later, Captain Walker memorialized his mother’s courage and spirit by funding an endowment in her name in his will. The Ada Craig Walker Award goes each year to an outstanding senior woman “who, in the judgment of the faculty, best typifies the ideals of the institution.

Ragi S. Patel

The most recent recipient, Ragi S. Patel of Huntsville, Alabama, is now a student at Emory University School of Law. Miss Patel plans to pursue a career “geared towards helping others.”

How do we know about Ada Craig Walker? Captain Walker’s only daughter, Janet, now 81, still lives much of the year in Albany. Although she was only four years old when her grandmother died, Miss Walker remembers much about Ada from Captain Walker’s loving accounts. (The elegant Victorian mansion at 423 State Street where Janet Walker grew up is now owned by the University at Albany Foundation, refurbished and used as a conference center.)

Endowments like the Ada Craig Walker Award provide renewable support for scholarships, lectures by visiting scholars, teaching and research. They have become increasingly important to the University as the State-funded portion of our annual operating budget has shrunk to about 25 percent. Today, UAlbany’s endowments total nearly $10 million and generate almost a half million dollars annually.

The University needs to grow these endowments to remain competitive among public research universities. Endowments at the University of Virginia, for example, total $1.75 billion, at the University of Michigan nearly twice that. For that reason, we are pleased that among those listed in this special edition of UAlbany are some who have initiated endowed funds this past year, following in the footsteps of Captain Walker. Also highlighted are members of the 1999-2000 Honor Roll of donors, who led us to another record-breaking year. Your University is grateful to every donor. You do, indeed, provide the margin of excellence.

Thank you!

Robert R. Ashton
Vice President,
University Advancement