Gift will create the Martha Darling ’66 Fund, which supports student success initiatives
October 1, 2024
Press Release
PORTLAND—Reed alumna Martha A. Darling ’66 and her husband, Gilbert Omenn, M.D., Ph.D., are donating $10 million to support student success at Reed College. This is the largest gift designated for this purpose at Reed in the 116-year history of the college.
The Martha Darling ’66 Fund will lay the foundation for the next evolution of student support at Reed College.
“Martha’s generous gift to the college will not only expand and deepen our impact on the student experience but also redefine it,” Vice President for Student Life Karnell McConnell-Black said. “By elevating student leadership development, enhancing the residential college model, and providing holistic success coaching, this gift will empower our students to thrive both on campus and beyond. The ripple effects of Martha’s generosity will extend into the community, creating a legacy of leadership that reaches far beyond the college grounds.”
The Martha Darling ’66 Fund will focus on supporting students’ academic success in their first two years at Reed along with expanding their leadership and career exploration skills to ensure they have the foundation they need to graduate and continue to flourish after graduation.
“Reed is about rigorous academics, but it is also about providing students with the non-academic skills and knowledge they need for productive lives. The kinds of interventions this fund will support can be hugely important both for individual students and for the student body overall because it shows them how much Reed cares about their success. These skills help students become more effective navigators of their own lives,” Darling said. “This fund will help create new student support and strengthen existing supports in ways that make me envious that I’m not a student right now.”
The endowments ensure these positions and programs will persist in perpetuity, serving Reed students for generations to come.
“We are honored that Martha has chosen to make this transformational gift to Reed College, and we know that this investment will provide strong support for our students throughout their college experience and as they pursue their purpose after graduation,” Reed College President Audrey Bilger said. “The Martha Darling ’66 Fund will help prepare Reed students to tackle some of the world’s biggest challenges and to innovate in ways that benefit society.”
Impact of the Donation
The Martha Darling ’66 Fund will endow the following positions and programming at Reed College in support of students’ academic success in their first two years of school:
- Residential College Program Director and Programming: The residential college program director will be a critical leader in enhancing Reed’s residential life program. This new member of the student life leadership team will expand on Reed’s traditions of collaborative intellectual work by developing new partnerships with faculty and staff. These partnerships will yield new co-curricular programming, expanded academic support, additional social and physical activities, and career and leadership development within the residence halls.
- Student Mentoring and Leadership: Reed aims to expand on the tradition of student mentors and leaders who have long helped students thrive within Reed’s distinctive academic and social environment. Research shows that student mentoring and leadership roles are critical to helping students establish meaningful connections to one another, to college resources, and to other members of the Reed and Portland community.
- First-Year Academic Support Counselor: This counselor will focus their efforts on students’ first-year academic experiences, analyzing new data, designing additional data collection work, conducting interviews with students, recommending early support and interventions, and contributing to the collective work to change practices throughout the college to best support students. This position would interweave academic and social supports, acting as a student success coach.
- Center for Life Beyond Reed Sophomore Career Exploration Program: This initiative will provide the opportunity for 100 percent of sophomores to meet with Center for Life Beyond Reed (CLBR) staff during this critical time in their Reed trajectory. Students who visit the center tend to return on a regular basis, to explore possibilities for internships, prestigious fellowships, and pathways to bright futures.
About Martha A. Darling
Martha A. Darling ’66 is one of Reed's most stalwart supporters of students. When she arrived in Portland in 1962, she got to know Ann Shepard and Jack Dudman, who became two iconic deans of students. In 2019, she established an endowment to enhance student and campus life activities in the Division of Student Life. In recognition of this gift, Reed College named the dean of students role in her honor.
As a longtime member of the board of trustees, she has championed student life initiatives, established the Lu Ann Williams Darling '42 Scholarship in memory of her mother, and created the Munk-Darling Lecture Fund in International Relations to bring distinguished speakers to campus.
Darling majored in American Studies-Political Science at Reed and earned a master’s degree from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. She has pursued a dynamic and varied career, including roles in public service, public policy, and business management. Darling was a senior manager at Boeing, vice president for strategic planning at Seattle-First National Bank, and executive director of the Washington Business Roundtable’s Education Study. As a White House Fellow, she served as executive assistant to Secretary of the Treasury W. Michael Blumenthal and later was senior legislative aide to U.S. Senator Bill Bradley.
Darling has served on a variety of boards, among them the White House Commission on Presidential Scholars; PBS Foundation; National Wildlife Federation Action Fund; Maverick Collective; Salzburg Global; and the Institute for Women's Policy Research. She is also founding co-chair of Michigan’s Washtenaw Success by Six early childhood initiative. In 2016, she was recognized by the National Wildlife Foundation as its conservationist of the year. Also in 2016, Martha received Reed’s Foster-Scholz Distinguished Service Award for her commitment to communities within Reed and beyond.
About Reed College
Founded in 1908 in southeast Portland, Oregon, Reed College is a coeducational, independent liberal arts and sciences college. Referred to as one of the most intellectual colleges in the country, Reed is known for its high standards of scholarly practice, creative thinking, and engaged citizenship.
Reed College is devoted to the intrinsic value of intellectual pursuit and governed by the highest standards of scholarly practice, critical thought, and creativity. Its undergraduate program of study, leading to the degree of Bachelor of Arts, is demanding and intense and balances breadth of knowledge across the curriculum with depth of knowledge in a particular field of study. The goal of the Reed education is that students learn and demonstrate rigor and independence in their habits of thought, inquiry, and expression.
For more information, contact:
Sheena McFarland, Executive Director of Public Affairs & Communications, Reed College
smcfarland@reed.edu; Cell: 801-510-5567
About Reed College
Founded in 1908 in southeast Portland, Oregon, Reed College is a coeducational, independent liberal arts and sciences college. Referred to as one of the most intellectual colleges in the country, Reed is known for its high standards of scholarly practice, creative thinking, and engaged citizenship.
Reed College is devoted to the intrinsic value of intellectual pursuit and is governed by the highest standards of scholarly practice, critical thought, and creativity. Its undergraduate program of study, leading to the degree of Bachelor of Arts, is demanding and intense and balances breadth of knowledge across the curriculum with depth of knowledge in a particular field of study. The goal of a Reed education is that students learn and demonstrate rigor and independence in their habits of thought, inquiry, and expression.