When Neil T. Brigham was wondering what to get his wife, Mary Ellen ’81 CLAS, ’88, this past Christmas, he came up empty. Then he accompanied her to a UConn women’s basketball game and alumni event in Atlanta, where he found the perfect gift.
“It dawned on him that one of the most important things to me was UConn,” says Mary Ellen Brigham, who is active in the UConn Alumni Association chapter in Atlanta. “Over the course of the event, he got the idea of doing a scholarship.”
The Brigham’s three children, all strong students, have been challenged with learning disabilities, throwing Brigham into the position of advocate early on. When her eldest, Kathryn, who has dyslexia, chose to attend UConn, Brigham and her daughter immediately contacted the Center for Students with Disabilities. “They were wonderful from the start,” Brigham says. “They were knowledgeable and knew what approach was right for her. She hit it off so well with the center that for two years she actually worked for them.”
So the Brighams created the Mary Ellen Brigham Endowment Fund for students in the Center for Students with Disabilities. A match from Neil Brigham’s company, KPMG LLP, will help build the endowment more quickly.
For students with disabilities, UConn’s Center for Students with Disabilities is a featured attraction, and an assurance that their specific needs will be understood and accommodated. Each one of the Brigham children is an honors student, and all are succeeding in their academic goals. In Kathryn’s case, that meant graduating cum laude with dual degrees in animal science from the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources and Spanish from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. She is now a second-year Ph.D. student in chronic disease epidemiology at Yale.
“People are coming from all over New England to UConn because the University has one of the best disabilities services departments in the country,” Brigham says. “For Katie, the center provided the needed support to be successful in a large university.”
The scholarship is another step for Brigham in her efforts to support her alma mater. Besides her involvement with the Atlanta alumni chapter and her role as a UConn parent, she also taught business courses at UConn some years ago. She has been a part of the University for decades, and the scholarship was a fitting symbol of her continuing commitment.
“It was my present at Christmastime,” she says. “And it meant far more to me than a typical present. I want people to know it’s easier than they think to put together a scholarship. It can be built over time, and they can still feel good about it because they can anticipate that it will make a difference.”
To make a gift to the Center for Students with Disabilities, please contact the Foundation’s development staff for more information.
