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WCU Stories

Donna Winbon and her blue BMW convertable

Donna Winbon to lead WCU Foundation board

It’s no surprise that Donna Winbon drives a bright blue BMW Z4 roadster. They’re both sporty and fun, and in BMW’s words: an irresistible force that provides maximum excitement. (Sounds like Winbon, doesn’t it?)   

Athletics

Time and Treasure Highlight ‘I Love WCU’

Western Carolina University faculty and staff opened their hearts as well as their wallets and calendars this year to support the university’s fourth annual “I Love WCU” campaign during the month of February. This year’s campaign, which was a joint effort from the Division of Advancement and the Center for Community Engagement and Service Learning, encouraged participants to volunteer their time to community service projects, as well as to make charitable donations.  

Facilities Management

Family Comes First for New Facilities Management Scholarship, an “I Love WCU” Story

Western Carolina University’s Facilities Management unit is a family, as far as members of its leadership team are concerned, so they decided to help take care of their own by establishing the WCU Facilities Management Annual Scholarship in honor of “I Love WCU” month.  

Jennifer Hinton

Recreational Therapy Director says Helping Others Helps Her; an “I Love WCU” Story

It’s hard to tell where Jennifer Hinton’s real job ends and her volunteer work begins. As program director and clinical education coordinator for Western Carolina University’s recreational therapy program, Hinton spends much of her time teaching her students about service-learning, coordinating volunteer projects for them or doing community service herself — sometimes for work, her church, her family — or often a combination of some of them, if not all.   

Amber Parker

WCU Dance Team Coaches Create Scholarship in Memory of Former Member

Funny, funny, funny. That was Amber Parker in a nutshell, say those who best knew the vibrant young woman who graduated from Western Carolina University in 2016 and passed away Nov. 18, 2018, at age 24 from a rare form of ovarian cancer.  

giving tuesday

Catamount Nation Answers the Call on Giving Tuesday

For the fourth time in as many years, Western Carolina Athletics and its fundraising arm, the Catamount Club, put out the call as part of the National Day of Giving, #GivingTuesday. And once again, the generosity of the Catamount Nation brightly shined through. Through fundraising efforts stemming around the Dec. 3 Giving Tuesday initiative, a total of 254 generous supporters ranging from the West Coast to the Southeast – and points in between – answered the Giving Tuesday challenge by raising a record-setting total...  

Lead the Way Logo

Scholarships Created from Lead the Way

Thanks to your generous support we were able to create over 200 scholarships during our Lead the Way Campaign. Explore the scholarships here...  

Dwight Ryland

Colorado couple endows scholarship in effort to save environment through education

Dwight Ryland has seen some glorious views in his day, having climbed all 54 of Colorado’s 14,000-foot mountains — some of them more than once—and skied his native state’s majestic slopes. But a dark cloud on the horizon has redirected his gaze and nudged the 77-year-old Ryland to put his money where his heart is: saving the environment through education.  

Lead the Way Reveal

‘Lead the Way’ fundraising campaign total surpasses $60 million goal

David Belcher would be proud. Thanks to more than 12,000 donors — nearly half of those first-time donors — the Western Carolina University family helped the beloved late chancellor meet his pledge of raising millions of dollars in scholarship support to help WCU students pay for their education.   

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