Reed Gifted $10 Million from Trustee Emerita Martha Darling ‘66

On Tuesday, Oct 1, the President's Office sent out a campus-wide email announcing a generous $10 million donation given by alumna and trustee emerita Martha Darling ’66 and her husband Gilbert Omenn, MD, PhD. According to the email and attached press release, the fund will pay for several important initiatives and positions on campus, all of which specifically focus on student support networks on campus including the Center for Life Beyond Reed, the Peer Mentor Program, and Residence Life.

Details of the fund are centered specifically on student success in the first two years of college, and will endow the following positions and programming at Reed: Residential College Program Director and Programming, Student Mentoring and Leadership, First-Year Academic Support Counselor, and Center for Life Beyond Reed Sophomore Career Exploration Program. To read more about what these positions and programming will accomplish, head to the press release published on Reed College Newsroom.

Darling was a longtime member of the Board of Trustees at Reed College where she was a strong advocate of student support since the beginning of her time there. In President Audrey Bilger's Oct 1 email, she described Darling as “having chaired the President’s Commission on Student Life at Reed College in the early 1990s and producing a 1993 report that helped define goals for the Division of Student Life.” On top of this, she has established a plethora of student life initiatives. This includes the Lu Ann Williams Darling ’42 Scholarship created in memory of Darling’s mother, who often remarked that she was only able to attend Reed because of scholarship assistance, which is awarded to a Reed student with financial need, with a preference for students from Oregon. She also established the Munk-Darling Lectures which bring distinguished speakers to campus, and she provided funding for the Dean of Students role, which led to the role being given her name: the Martha A. Darling Dean of Students.

Darling graduated from Reed College in 1966 with a degree in American Studies-Political Science and then went on to earn a master’s degree in 1970 from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs – which is now known as the School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA). Following this, she began her career in a senior leadership position at Boeing and then served in numerous national and state policy roles. She was a White House Fellow in the late 1970s, serving as executive assistant to Treasury Secretary W. Michael Blumenthal, and then became senior legislative aide to U.S. Senator Bill Bradley. Darling’s impressive accomplishments do not stop there. She was also a member of the White House Commission on Presidential Scholars and has held leadership roles with the Maverick Collective, the Sphinx Organization, and the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. Further, she is on the board of directors of the Salzburg Global Seminar and is chair of the National Wildlife Federation Action Fund. In 2016, she was honored by the National Wildlife Federation with its National Conservation Achievement Award, which was created to recognize esteemed partners who have helped the Federation shape some of today's most crucial conservation wins, and whose previous award winners boast big names such as First Lady Michelle Obama, Ted Roosevelt IV, Walt Disney, and many other impressive individuals. 

Sheena McFarland, Reed’s Head of Public Relations explained, “Reed will receive the donation in two payments by June 30, 2026. The pledge payments will be placed into the college’s endowment. When the payments are received, they will start earning interest. Typically, we need to have one year's worth of earnings before funds can be spent.” Further, Chris Pearson, Director of Principal Gifts, explained that “The new positions and programming will go into effect after the college receives the donation.” Following this, the hiring process for the new positions will begin.

In response to questions about the implementation of the positions and programming, Karnell McConnell-Black, Vice President for Student Life said, “In Student Life, we follow the college’s hiring procedures. This includes organizing a search committee that identifies the top ten attributes required for a position. Since these are new roles, we will collaborate with HR to create job descriptions aligned with the vision of a residential college model.”

He then explained the residential college model, as some of the funds will be used towards adding a new position: the Residential College Program Director and adding programming to go along with the position. According to McConnell-Black, the model “aims to enhance the on-campus living experience by building upon the existing neighborhood model of residence halls. This approach fosters a comprehensive and unified framework for student growth, emphasizing the creation of strong community ties and deep connections between students, faculty, and staff.” He continued, “This model also enhances cross-departmental collaboration by engaging faculty, staff, and students through various living-learning communities.” This is not the first programming with this goal in mind. Just this year, the Garden House living-learning community was piloted in partnership with the Environmental Humanities program and the Sustainability Justice initiative.

McConnell-Black then explained that alongside these initiatives, Reed is working on strengthening leadership development programs for students in peer leadership roles, including the PMP program, Orientation and Wayfinding Leaders, and Interconnect Mentors. “These opportunities aim to cultivate leadership skills and empower students in formal leadership capacities,” he said. “All of this work will be grounded in the student life curriculum that we are currently developing. We are adopting a curricular approach to organizing and sequencing learning outcomes for students outside the classroom. This method will offer consistent, structured experiences for students, improve wayfinding, and reduce the need for reactive or over-programming. This scaffolded, developmental approach provides a shared sense of purpose for staff and ensures we use a common language when discussing our activities and goals. The key learning domains we’ve identified are: Self-Discovery/Personal Development, Social Responsibility & Dynamics of Difference and Power, Well-being, and Self-efficacy. These learning domains may shift as we work through the development [of] the student life curriculum.”

Quoted in the press release, Darling explained the importance of these funds: “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…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.”

While current seniors and juniors might not see the effects of this fund, freshmen, sophomores, and students for generations to come will reap the benefits that Darling so kindly invested in them.