Give to Art

“It was his fault that we even met,” Jane teased. The conductor of the Fairbanks Symphony Orchestra in 1978, Gordon Wright, was a close friend of the Aspnes’ long before they moved to Alaska.

Gordon “owned a music store and when I showed up to grad school there you had to get all your books and things at the music store,” Jane said of her arrival.

Jane showed up at 9 a.m. The store was in an office building basement with a narrow hallway leading to the door. “Gordon Wright’s Music Store” was lettered onto the glass.

When Jane arrived, nobody was there. She figured they must just be running a few minutes late, so she sat in the hallway and waited. Shortly, a man made his way down the hallway. 

“What, they aren’t open yet?” he said and sat down across from her.

After several minutes of awkward silence they engaged in a little small talk. His name was John Aspnes. 

It turned out Gordon, the proprietor, ate pancakes every morning at his favorite restaurant and didn’t open shop until 10. Little did he know his breakfast ritual played matchmaker. It was love at first pancake -- even if Jane and John were not the ones eating. Forty years of marriage and seven dogs later they still laugh at the happenstance of their meet cute.

“We have always teased Gordon about that,” Jane said as she and John reminisced about the first years of their life together. 

Jane and John Aspnes have been a part of the UAF family since 1978, when they moved to Fairbanks after John accepted a position in the engineering department. Alaska fit their outdoor lifestyle -- backcountry hiking, bird watching and volunteer search and rescue expeditions with their dogs filled their time. 

“We both agree that the outdoors is our home and that our house is our shelter,” Jane said. “The more that we are outside, the happier we are.”

Aside from their love of the outdoors they also have a fierce passion for music. Music has run through their veins since they were young. John grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin. He quickly discovered playing the violin with the Madison Orchestra relieved him of his cow milking duties, and so began his musical journey. Jane grew up in Mason City, Iowa, home to the beloved musical “The Music Man.”  The couple plays myriad instruments, but Jane’s focus is the French horn, while John adores the violin. They have played in the Fairbanks Symphony for over 35 years, joining the year they moved up to the North.

Recently, John and Jane created a new scholarship, J² Scholarships for Polymaths and Creative Leaders. It seeks to help the modern day Renaissance person. The scholarship provides $5,000 per academic year to the recipient and has been allocated to UAF’s Resilience and Adaptation Program (RAP).

RAP is unique and is one of the only of its kind in the world. 

“The Resilience and Adaptation Program is an interdisciplinary training and education program focusing on sustainability in times of rapid change,” according to their website. “The Resilience and Adaptation Program prepares scholars, policy-makers, community leaders, and managers to address issues of sustainability in an integrated fashion.”

For Jane and John, the diversity of thought at UAF tops the institution’s attributes. They have dipped their fingers in many different departments and even across colleges at the university. John functioned as an engineer, Jane in resource management, both of them in the symphony. In their experience, they have been impressed with the support bridging the gaps between the different worlds. 

John remembers when he started working at UAF, and Howard Cutler himself made a personal effort to know what was happening with all of his employees. He would ask John about Jane and the symphony and personal details that John never shared directly with him but Cutler made a point of knowing and supporting.

It was different from John’s previous university experience. There, he felt as though he had to keep his musicianship and relationship with the music department secret. There was a definite discrimination between departments and across colleges. But not at UAF and it's this diversity of thought that they have found to be captivating and essential in the success of the university’s students and ultimately our future leaders.

A thought leader that Jane really enjoys is Edward Osborne Wilson, usually cited as E. O. Wilson. The American biologist and is considered the world’s leading expert in the study of ants.

Wilson “realized that universities have made people be specialists,” Jane said. “All their research has to be the ultimate ant person or the ultimate cello player or the ultimate this or that. And he realizes that has created problems with how we approach society and our environmental problems.”

Through perspectives like Wilson’s, the Aspnes’ recognized that multidiversity is a good thing. They became inspired to create their our own scholarship instead of donating their money to a particular discipline. The dynamic couple’s scholarship reflects their personality. It’s based on their life experiences.

“A number of people here at this university are maybe the first people in their families to go to college or graduate from college or get a graduate degree and that sort of thing,” John said. “If an injection of money can help make that possible, it is a worthwhile endeavor.”

This is not John and Jane’s first gift to the university. They have been giving for the last 20 years. As they have grown and changed, so have their gifts. Dozens of students have benefited from their contributions. Lori Beraha recently received that first on the new scholarships. A non-traditional graduate student with interests in biology and art, she has traveled the world conducting ethnographic fieldwork which evolved into her current profession as a marine naturalist.

We hear the word philanthropy tossed around all the time and what do we think of when we hear it? Maybe wealthy celebrities like actor, Leonardo DiCaprio in a tuxedo throwing around 20 million dollars like paper confetti at Great Gatsby Party. So many of us think to ourselves, I wish I could donate to them, but money doesn’t mean the same thing to a philanthropist as it means to me. I’m just a regular person, no tiny amount of money I have could possibly make a difference. As it turns out, that’s exactly who philanthropists are, regular people.

In UAF’s College of Liberal Arts, donors wear all sorts of stripes. Some donate artwork, musical instruments, or random items of value from their homes. Others diligently give small. One Giving isn’t about the number; it’s about wholeheartedly supporting a cause you believe in and hold dear and taking it a step further to cultivate and grow the programs you care about.