 |
John and Kathleen Dracup: Supporting the future of UC
by Jenn Shreve
 |
John and Kathleen Dracup’s Nob Hill home in San Francisco is full of oil paintings created by Kathleen’s maternal grandmother. Hanging behind them is one, a portrait of Kathleen’s mother Lucy that dates from the early 1920s.
PEG SKORPINSKI PHOTO
|
For more than four decades, John and Kathleen Dracup have been a part of the University of California, first as graduate students, then as faculty. John (Ph.D.’66 CE) is professor of the graduate school in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Berkeley, and Kathleen is dean of the School of Nursing at UCSF. Last February, they made a commitment to create an estate plan that will enable them to continue their support of both campuses for years to come.
“We feel very fortunate to be able to make this financial commitment to UC and help future generations benefit, as we have, from this outstanding institution,” says John. “ Berkeley is just a magical place. The graduate students I work with are the best in the nation.”
The son of Scottish immigrants, John grew up in Seattle and got his bachelor’s degree at the University of Washington. He earned his master’s at MIT before coming to Berkeley in 1962 for his doctorate. Kathleen, who was raised in Santa Monica, earned her B.S. at St. Xavier’s University in Chicago and went on to earn a master’s at UCLA and a doctorate at UCSF.
During the mid-’60s, John was teaching at UCLA. While visiting one of his students in the hospital, he met the student’s nurse, Kathleen, and the two were married 18 months later. That was 33 years ago. They now have five children living in southern California and nine grandchildren.
“We’re just delighted with UC,” Kathleen says. “We believe in public education, the system’s faculty governance model, and its tradition of excellence. All these factors make us want to support future generations.”
John and Kathleen may owe their careers to the UC system, but they say it was their savvy investments in California real estate that enabled them to designate $500,000 from their estate to each of their schools. Their gift to UC Berkeley will provide fellowships to graduate students in environmental engineering, while the UCSF gift will establish an endowed chair in the School of Nursing.
“Being a dean,” Kathleen says, “I’ve discovered that, if schools are going to prosper and grow, they must have the support of alumni and faculty.” She emphasizes that UC is state assisted, not state supported, and that drastic decreases in state funding have made private support even more essential.
“Both John and I were the beneficiaries of scholarships,” she adds. “We couldn’t have obtained our degrees without them, so we have a tremendous appreciation for the importance of scholarships.”
JENN SHREVE is a writer who covers technology and culture. She lives in San Francisco and is earning her M.F.A. in fiction writing at San Francisco State University.
|
|
FOREFRONT takes you into the
labs, classrooms, and lives of professors, students, and alumni
for an intimate look at the innovative research, teaching, and
campus life that define the College of Engineering at the University
of California, Berkeley.
Published twice a year by the College of Engineering Office of Marketing & Communications. Have a comment about Forefront? E-mail
your letter to the editor. Click here
to learn more about the magazine. |
|
