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College of Agricultural and Life Sciences

College of Agricultural and Life Sciences

CALS Connection Summer 2019

"CALS Stood Up and Hollered on Gator Nation Giving Day"

By Zoe Bowden, agricultural education and communication master’s student

Published June 1, 2019

Gators from all over the world came together on February 26, 2019 to support the Gator Nation on the University of Florida’s first ever “Stand Up and Holler: Gator Nation Giving Day”. 

“Gator Nation Giving Day was the first of its kind that the University of Florida as a whole has done,” said Caylin Hilton, associate director of annual giving and engagement for UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS) Advancement Office. “We do a lot of projects throughout the year that are focused on specific areas or typically reach out to a certain audience, but Giving Day was very comprehensive and involved a lot more partners than many of our other projects do.”

Over the course of 24 hours, UF received 11,535 gifts from alumni, students, professors, parents and other friends. These totaled more than $12.6 million, making UF’s campaign one of the most successful of its kind in the country.

The campaign was named after the Gator football game cheer ‘Two Bits! Four Bits! Six Bits! A Dollar! All for the Gators stand up and holler!’ made famous by George Edmondson Jr., better known as ‘Mr. Two Bits’ by fans. Edmondson’s orange and blue striped necktie was used as a symbol to promote the inaugural 24-hour giving campaign.

With more than 500 gifts to various UF/IFAS projects, the Giving Day total reached $114,677 for UF/IFAS with 135 gifts and $8,112 toward College of Agricultural and Life Sciences (CALS) efforts. The CALS Alumni SHARE Council pledged a $1,000 match toward the CALS Student Philanthropy Council (SPC) Freshman Scholarship fund.

CALS Giving Day Breakdown:

  • $6,416 CALS Alumni & Friends Classroom Renovation (98 gifts)
  • $1,696 CALS SPC Scholarship (37 gifts)
  • $1,000 CALS SPC SHARE Match (met)

“It was great to see a breadth of projects and priorities for IFAS and the college, and to be part of a larger university initiative that was far more inclusive than any other project that we’ve done in the past,” Hilton said.

On Giving Day, CALS focused efforts on two ongoing projects within the college: The freshmen scholarship fund and the McCarty Classroom Renovation project. The Student Philanthropy Council (SPC) is a student-run organization that raises funds for CALS freshmen scholarships. The SPC scholarship provides one-to-three incoming CALS freshmen with $1,000 scholarships to aid them in their first year at the University of Florida. Second, the McCarty Classroom Renovation project aims to provide CALS students with updated learning spaces with the technology and resources to improve their learning experience.

“Two of the highest priorities for the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences are to promote excellence in teaching and to prepare society-ready graduates,” said CALS Dean Elaine Turner. “To do that, we need effective spaces for teaching and learning. As we renovate, we are looking to make our classrooms more flexible, more adaptable and more collaborative.”

CALS students will benefit from gifts toward the two CALS projects as well as from gifts to additional IFAS efforts that have a student focus.

“Under the School of Forest Resources and Conservation, the geomatics program had an alumnus come in with a challenge of $2,500 for geomatics alumni to benefit the Gibson Endowment,” Hilton said. “We raised almost $15,000 for the Geomatics program.” The Gibson Endowment, named after the founding director of the geomatics (surveying) program at UF, supports geomatics faculty and students in the geomatics major through scholarships, fellowships and equipment updates.

Furthermore, IFAS collaborated with the Office of the UF/IFAS Dean for Research to promote the Path to Pioneers program. This project is specifically designed to aid CALS undergraduate students in gaining research experiences and internships.

The success of the inaugural Gator Giving Day is a testament to the generosity and passion of all the students, staff, faculty, alumni and friends that make up the Gator Nation.

“The original goal at the university level was 5,000 gifts for the day; we ended up reaching 11, 535 gifts,” Hilton said. “For IFAS, we didn’t really have a benchmark because we hadn’t done this sort of thing before, but looking at our annual giving, it definitely exceeded expectations.”

The second annual Gator Giving Day is expected to occur in the spring of 2020.