Pruitt legacy supports students

February 5, 2020

Marmian Grimes

In 2018, UAF alumnus James Pruitt left a planned gift of more than $3 million to both the School of Management and the UAF Alumni Association.

Today, part of that gift forms the nucleus of the Student Support Fund, which helps students through unexpected challenges. Proceeds from the 2020 Blue and Gold Celebration will build on Pruitt’s legacy by adding to the fund.

Pruitt’s gift may have seemed to come from out of nowhere. But the real story is that he was connected to UAF long after he graduated, in particular through an almost monthly correspondence with folks at the School of Management.

Pruitt received his Bachelor of Business Administration from the school in 1973. He started working for Amoco about six months after graduating and was able to retire after a long career with BP, which acquired Amoco in 1998. He was 68 years old when he died.

Tammy Tragis-McCook, the school’s development and outreach director, started talking to Pruitt a little more than five years ago when he began funding the Green Island Scholarship for two freshman or sophomore students enrolled in the business program. Though she was never able to meet him, she felt she understood what mattered to him.

“He was pragmatic,” she said. “No nonsense. He wanted things a certain way. I respected that. He didn’t just give to his scholarship at UAF, he was very involved in making sure
it supported the kind of motivated student he was interested in helping, not necessarily with the best GPA.”

Pruitt’s passion was supporting hard-working, nontraditional students. Tragis-McCook said UAF prepared him for the successful career he had in the oil industry, and for that he was thankful. Through his giving, Pruitt wanted to recreate the type of experience he had at UAF and to offer a chance for students to shape their lives in the way he had.

“He had very good memories of his time at UAF,” she said. “He worked while he went to school, so he was one of our nontraditional students at a time many students did not work. It was important to him that his scholarship students worked in the summer to off set educational expenses. He wanted to support industrious students who took part in financing their own education.”

While the bulk of his gift established the James Pruitt Endowed Chair of Management, the remainder represents the largest gift UAFAA has received to date. Thanks to his generosity, the alumni association will be able to increase its support for projects on campus that directly benefit students. With the Pruitt gift, the UAFAA board of directors quickly established a unique funding source for students, one not based on grades or designated to a specific field of study. They hoped this Student Support Fund could make the difference between a student dropping out and being able to stay in school.

As James Pruitt might have put it, it's a hand up rather than a hand out. Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs and Athletics Keith Champagne had outlined the need for a fund like this when he arrived on campus in 2018.

“Today’s college students are very different than those who went to school 10, 20 or 30 years ago,” he said. “These students are connected. They are connected to the internet and to their parents. They are dealing with the transformation of a society. They are the first to spend their whole lives in the internet age.”

Champagne said students have more life choices than ever before. Choices regarding work, family and school often mean forgoing a college education for something more immediate when hardship arises. And that means the university needs to adapt to continue to be relevant to this generation.

Kaydee Van Flein, associate director of the Center for Student Rights and Responsibilities, has seen this unfold in real life. She’s seen students struggle when, after a death, they juggle classes and travel expenses to be with family as part of the grieving process. She also knows what it’s like to watch a student get out of a domestic violence situation with no place to go and then try to manage being both homeless and a full-time student.

These challenges are real. And with planned increases in tuition costs, along with rising prices for housing, meals, supplies, textbooks and transportation, many students often work full-time jobs to cover the costs of attending a university. The university uses its Care Team, a group of staff and faculty members, to support students. Students referred to the team are given assistance and resources to help ensure they stay in school and graduate.

“The Student Support Fund will assist students who experience extenuating circumstances that impact their ability to focus on their classes,” Van Flein said. “A fund like this, when they have exhausted all other options, could be the difference between graduation and never returning to school.”

Since its establishment in the spring of 2019, the fund has already been put to good use. One graduate student who experienced a medical emergency used it to pay for required air ambulance services to Anchorage for surgery. The student said the gift did more than cover the necessities, it helped make an extremely stressful situation easier to get through.

“There are many people like me who don’t have much immediate support available to them,” he said. “Having this resource available to students helps to create a sense of community and makes UAF a much better place.”

Support for the fund is already growing. Chancellor Dan White has designated the proceeds from this year’s Blue and Gold Celebration to benefit the Student Support Fund.

Tragis-McCook said Pruitt would have been supportive, too. “Oh, yes, the Student Support Fund is ideal. He would have supported a fund that benefits students in need. Students who are struggling but are willing to keep going and not give up. He would be very pleased.”