Gifts Rooted in Family History: Honors Faculty Support the Path Program

Trish Starks and Michael Pierce were both raised in families of public school teachers and share a deep belief in the U of A’s transformative role as a public institution. On campus, Starks serves as a Distinguished Professor of history and director of the Arkansas Humanities Center, while Pierce is an associate professor of history and directs the Nelson Hackett Project. While the university offers expansive opportunities and academic resources, they believe the Honors College provides the close-knit support of a small school, empowering students not just to excel but to flourish in their intellectual curiosities.

However, they are also keenly aware of the very real barriers to a college education, challenges they have seen firsthand in their families and in the students they mentor and teach.

“My grandmother, who came from a farm family of 13 in Missouri, left school in the fourth grade,” Starks said. “She was smart. Brilliant, even. But she always felt inadequate without that formal education. She valued education because she didn’t have the opportunity to get it. She made sure both her children earned college degrees, even graduate degrees. She was very proud of that. It was a distinguishing feature of what she was able to do in life.”

The first endowment Starks and Pierce made to the Honors College honored Starks’s grandmother, Rubye, whom Starks remembers as their “biggest fan” during their academic journey. In recognition of Rubye’s influence, they intentionally directed the gift to the Path Program.

“We believe that a top-quality education shouldn’t be out of reach for hard-working, talented Arkansas students just because of finances,” Pierce said, underscoring the responsibility of a land-grant institution.

“The Path Program not only understands first-generation students’ financial, emotional, and logistical needs, but also builds a community that celebrates academic achievement and extends a vital support network.”

The first gift they pledged was to provide stop-gap emergency funding to help Path Scholars who would otherwise be unable to continue their education.

“My grandmother left school during the Great Depression,” Starks added. “It was financial need that pushed her out. We know students today face family responsibilities and other life emergencies that can make it difficult to finish school.”

They’ve pledged another significant endowment to the Path Program, this time in honor of Pierce’s mother, Patricia.

“She was a first-generation college student in Appalachia in the 1950s,” he noted. “She says the only way she got to college was because there was a local state university right there.”

Patricia had hoped to study chemistry but was discouraged from pursuing the field because of prevailing attitudes about women in science at that time. She became a teacher instead, though even that path came with financial challenges; she couldn’t afford professional clothing for her student teaching assignment, which was 25 miles away.

“This endowment is meant to help students with internships, like student teaching,” Pierce said. “Students need that extra bit of flexibility to access these experiences and opportunities without added stress.”

They also see the Honors College as uniquely equipped to steward that kind of gift.

“We were at the university before the Honors College was founded,” Starks said. “We’ve watched it grow into an incredible resource for our high-achieving students. The Path Program, specifically, provides the kind of focused attention and support that many of our students need but have never had from an educational institution.”

As honors faculty, they are personally acquainted with many of the honors scholars and understand the need for support beyond existing scholarship funding. Their son also benefited from a Sturgis Fellowship, and both Starks and Pierce felt it was essential to pay that support forward by investing in resources that expand access for students across the state.

“The Honors College is serving Arkansas by retaining top talent, but to truly broaden that impact, we must ensure that students who need financial support and the attention to succeed here are given adequate resources,” Starks said.

This story also appeared in the Honors College A+ publication.