Inspired Support

Donor-backed deanships, chairs and professorships attract top leaders to the University of Wyoming.

 

By Micaela Myers

Faculty excellence and student success are the guiding principles of the University of Wyoming. Endowed faculty and administrators — named positions supported by donors — help the university accomplish both goals, bringing in top talent with the funding to support a variety of needs and initiatives across campus. 

UW endowed its first position, the Wold Chair, in 1990. Today, the number of endowed positions at UW stands at more than 90. UWyo Magazine spoke with several donors behind the endowments to find out what motivates them.

 

True Family 
For four generations, the True family has maintained strong ties with UW. The family’s patriarch H.A. “Dave” True Jr. was born in 1915 in Cheyenne. Eventually settling in Casper, he and his wife, Jean, had four children: Tamma True-Hatten, H.A. “Hank” True III, Diemer True and David L. True. Over the years, the family founded and operated companies including True Drilling, True Oil, True Ranches, Belle Fourche Pipeline, Toolpushers Supply, Eighty Eight Oil (formerly Black Hills Oil Marketers), Black Hills Trucking, Equitable Oil Purchasing and Hilltop National Bank. The Trues have also served as UW trustees and board presidents, beginning with the elder True and continuing with sons Hank and Dave. 

These strong ties motivated the Trues to endow the H.A. “Dave” True Jr. Chair in Petroleum and Natural Gas Economics in 2004 and the H.A. “Dave” True Jr. Family College of Business Deanship in 2023.

“I believe UW and our state need to have a strong business school because we need the skill and the economic mindset,” Dave says. 

The purpose of the True deanship is to enrich the business climate within the state by supporting the dean of the College of Business, Scott Beaulier, and the college’s education, research and outreach. Funds can be used to recruit and help retain top talent and to foster excellence and address critical needs and priorities of the college.

“I believe that endowed positions create a long-lasting advantage for UW students,” Dave says. “They bring a higher quality of individual into those positions. Also, the repeated annual source of revenue can advance the dean’s work and the college’s mission.”

Endowed positions also facilitate closer relationships between the donors, often industry experts, and UW colleges. 
Beaulier says, “Having the True deanship attached to our college has allowed us to grow closer with the True family and their amazing team of employees. These relationships are helping our students with job placement and are a win-win for both us and the True Cos.”

 

John P. “Jack” Ellbogen Foundation
Most people in Wyoming have heard the name Ellbogen — a name that’s become synonymous with education and philanthropy. John P. “Jack” Ellbogen was born in Worland, Wyo. He earned two UW degrees — a bachelor’s in history in 1948, followed by a law degree in 1950 — before becoming a successful independent oil producer. Before his death in 2001, he asked his daughter, Mary Ellbogen Garland, also a UW alum, to head up the foundation in his name.

“My dad had really strong feelings about the quality of his education and how it was the key to his success in business and in his life after he left the university,” Garland says. “In his estate documents, he asked that the foundation give consideration to the university.”

To say Garland has carried out these wishes is an understatement. Virtually no corner of campus is untouched by the Ellbogens’ generosity. This includes two endowed positions and a fellowship, among many other initiatives. 

Stellar teaching was especially important to Garland’s father, making investments in the College of Education one of their top priorities. In fact, he named the Mary Garland Early Career Fellowship after his daughter.

When the College of Education sought a new dean, the John P. “Jack” Ellbogen Deanship was created in 2020 to attract top talent, becoming the first-ever named academic deanship in UW history. The flexible funds allow the holder to strengthen their impact.

“In our case, the dean collaborates with our foundation on how those funds are used, and it’s a really wonderful relationship,” Garland says. “Because the Ellbogen Foundation invests in education across the state, we can think about the big picture. A lot of times, we can help build something from the ground up.”

For example, the funds helped launch UW’s career and technical education initiatives and the Wyoming Rural Teacher Corps.
In 2023, the Ellbogen Foundation endowed the John P. Ellbogen Foundation Professorship of Early Childhood Education.

“This professorship helps to recruit and retain an expert as well as supports early childhood educators across the state through the Wyoming Early Childhood Outreach Network,” Garland says. The network, also supported by the Ellbogen Foundation, facilitates collaboration in centers across Wyoming and delivers professional development opportunities.

“Our relationship with UW has been a really wonderful partnership in every way,” Garland says. “UW has given us an opportunity to develop things that we think are really important for the state as a whole.”

 

Doug and Deniz Stark
There’s a quote from famed Jackson “horse whisperer” Grant Golliher that inspires Doug Stark: “If you’ve ever had a parent, teacher, mentor, coach or even a friend who deeply believed in your potential, you’ll know how transformative that can be.”

“Many of us have had those experiences at the University of Wyoming, and I feel like it’s really important for us to support our faculty in the form of professorships so that we can attract the brightest and the best to this university for the benefit of our students,” Doug says. 

Last year, the Starks made a gift, doubled by state matching funds, to establish the Doug and Deniz Stark Ranch Management and Agricultural Leadership Professorship in the Ranch Management and Agricultural Leadership Program in the College of Agriculture, Life Sciences and Natural Resources.

“Agriculture has shaped Deniz and me in so many ways — from what we learned working on the ranch to the doors UW opened through education,” he says. “With this professorship, we want students to gain not only practical ranching skills but also leadership, vision and integrity, all qualities that help sustain our communities, our land and our way of life.”

Doug grew up in Riverton and earned his UW agricultural business degree in 1980. Over the next 37 years, he built an impressive career with Farm Credit Services of America, rising to president and CEO. His former employer even endowed the Farm Credit Services of America College of Agriculture, Life Sciences and Natural Resources Deanship. In retirement, Doug remains deeply engaged with UW, co-teaching leadership courses, helping establish the leadership minor and serving in advisory roles across campus.

Deniz was raised on her family’s ranch near Lost Springs and earned her UW agricultural business degree in 1984. Her career path included work with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development and service in education. Today, the Starks live on their ranch in Converse County and continue to honor their ranching roots while investing in its future.

As UW Foundation board chair, Doug has been instrumental in helping lead the charge to create more endowed positions. 
“It’s really a nice trend, and I think it will continue,” he says. “Donors know and see the impact that faculty can have on students, and that motivates them.”

 

Roy Shlemon
Roy Shlemon’s path to UW was anything but conventional. 

After military service in the early 1950s, he attended local junior and state colleges in California, where he grew up, graduating with a degree in geology. 

“Jobs were then not readily available, and so on to graduate school,” Shlemon says. But first, he had to decide which one. “My 1941 Chevy coupe could not ascend mountain roads, but UW offered provisional acceptance to a fellow student who had a car that could. And so, the two of us arrived unannounced in Laramie.”

Surviving Wyoming winters, Shlemon earned his UW geology master’s degree in 1959. After teaching for a few years in California, he pursued his Ph.D. at the University of California-Berkeley and went on to teach at the University of California – Davis and Louisiana State University, with lectureships at several other colleges. 

But the 1971 earthquake in the Los Angeles area changed everything. “In 1972, the state of California enacted laws defining ‘active faults’ and limited construction over and around these faults,” Shlemon says. “Serendipity prevailed. My research, ironically, focused on dating sediments and soils to determine the age and timing of surface fault rupture.”

Launching his own company, Shlemon then traveled the world to investigate faults and slope stability at many proposed nuclear power facilities, large dams and other engineered structures.  

Now in his early 90s and “too old to retire,” Shlemon has increased support for higher education. He gives to several initiatives at UW, most recently funding endowed professorships in engineering and environmental geology and in quaternary studies. The Quaternary refers to about the last 2.5 million years — the time when much of the world’s landscape formed, reflecting ongoing tectonics and climate change. 

Shlemon points out the many benefits of giving to UW: “As a small school, donations make a huge impact, with funds usually going directly to a designated beneficiary, whether that be a faculty member, student or program. Further, the state often provides donor matching funds — a great incentive to give.”

And there is the UW emphasis on what Shlemon calls the personal touch: Foundation personnel are always there to answer the phone and respond to emails, and things get done.  

“Perhaps best of all, UW emphasizes donor stewardship,” he says. “Really, a donor just wants to know two things: ‘Where did my money go, and what good did it do?’ And the UW Foundation staff and recipients duly respond!”