Three Ways to Direct Your Donation to the English Department
Thank you for supporting the activities and programs of the English Department! Your giving makes a positive impact on our students' and faculty experiences. Below are three initiatives to support in the Department:
The English Department General FUND
This is “giving, classic.”
This fund helps the English Department support students and faculty outside the classroom — for example, in travel and registration to conferences and support for student/faculty research. When students get their work accepted at national conferences, we want to be in a position to help them get there. Your Alumni Newsletter has featured regular accounting of all expenditures in this fund.
This fund has also supplied engagement fees to visiting writers and speakers, and supported the extracurricular programming that creates a well-rounded student experience.
The English Department - Student Assistance Endowment
This new fund, established in December 2020, responds to the needs of many students at Northeastern, who, for a variety of reasons, are just short of their goal, or facing the decision to pause their education.
As you well know, many of our students are a momentary job loss, an illness in the family, or a fender-bender away from not being able to pay their tuition for the current term — as issues compound, we see dreams deferred. Our goal here is to amass an endowed fund of $25,000 or more that, once established, will throw off enough money to help one or two students each year continue with their education, or pay for that last credit hour they’re missing.
Starting in Spring 2021, your Alumni Newsletter contains a graphic showing our progress toward this worthy goal. A group we call our “Giving Leaders” established a Matching Fund of $4,500 in the early spring of 2021. With the COVID-19 moment in mind, the response from you has been very strong already — thank you! We’re confident that we can attain the necessary amount for this endowment within three years — less if you respond today.
The Visiting Writers Series
We're excited to restart the Visiting Writers Series! The English Department’s Creative Writing Minor hosts several literary events each semester. Most of the events are part of our series The 82, named after the Kimball Avenue CTA bus line, which transports many of us to Northeastern's Main Campus and to El Centro, and which connects us to one another and to the rich tapestry of influences that is Chicago.
Each year, we pay engagement fees for six writers. Your donation to this fund will help us to do that, and is a contribution to the larger discourse we’re building and sustaining.
Each semester, we invite three Chicago-area writers, of multiple genres, to perform. Past writers have included Tara Betts, Kristiana Rae Colón, T. Clutch Fleischmann, Jac Jemc, Audrey Petty, Jacob Saenz, Michael Zapata, and Zoe Zolbrod. Writers share material from their award-winning work and from works-in-progress; they also talk with students and community members about their processes and their own influences.
Through these events, we foster meaningful literary encounters for students and community members, and we create a space by which Northeastern students and community members might enter into the discourse.
Complete the form below and choose a fund (or three!) to support. Thank you for your gift to the initiatives of the English Department!
