$2 million gift will expand disability support services at Penn State Behrend

ERIE, Pa. — A $2 million estate gift from Risa Glick, a 1986 graduate of Penn State Behrend, will expand and enhance support services for students, faculty and staff. The funding will provide direct assistance for temporary or ongoing needs and will be administered by the college’s Office of Disability Services.

The gift was inspired in part by Glick’s cousin, Jonathan, who has autism. He attended youth sports camps at Behrend.

“He particularly loved basketball camp,” said Glick, a resident of the greater Washington, D.C., area, where she works as a senior proposal manager at Arcfield, a U.S. defense, space and intelligence contractor. “Even though he would never attend Behrend as a student, the community still went above and beyond to provide the best possible experience for him. That meant a lot to our family.”

Glick enrolled at Behrend in 1982. She wrote for the student newspaper, serving as co-editor in her senior year, and planned to finish her degree at Penn State’s University Park campus. Over time, however, she chose to remain at Behrend, where she earned a degree in communication.

“I did not want to transfer,” she said. “I loved Behrend, and I benefited from the smaller student-to-faculty ratio.”

In the communication program, she began a lasting friendship with Cathy Mester, a longtime faculty member in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. Glick has made an immediate gift to activate her endowment, which will be fully funded through her estate, in honor of Mester and her late husband, Richard Mester, a retired professor of logic and philosophy.

As she planned the endowment, working with members of the Development team and the Office of Disability Services at Behrend, Glick designed the gift to have broad impact, and to grow as others contribute to it.

“I wanted to create a resource that includes students, but also faculty and staff, who are key contributors to Behrend being such a wonderful school to attend,” she said. “My goal is to help provide support services for any special need on campus.”

The endowment will fund the purchase of various support tools, including Livescribe pens, which assist students, faculty and staff with notetaking, and an electric wheelchair that can be loaned to students and campus visitors, including those attending admissions Open House events. It will expand Braille signage on the Behrend campus and provide special video monitors that will make the college’s testing center more accessible to students with limited vision.

Funding also will be used to provide inclusivity training for faculty, staff and student tutors who work with students with neurodiverse backgrounds.

“This gift will provide direct, life-changing support to the students who most need a boost as they navigate not only the college experience, but the college as a physical space,” Chancellor Ralph Ford. “We are deeply grateful for the thought and intentionality that Risa built into this gift, which will allow us to meet the varied needs of any individual student or Behrend community member.”

Risa Glick’s estate gift advances the University’s historic land-grant mission to serve and lead. Through philanthropy, alumni, grateful parents and friends are helping students to join the Penn State family and prepare for lifelong success; driving research, outreach, and economic development that grow our shared strength and readiness for the future; and increasing the University’s impact for families, patients and communities across the commonwealth and around the world. Learn more by visiting raise.psu.edu.