SHARE
[/vc_column_text][mk_image src=”http://www.asortest.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/social-fb-icon4.jpg” image_width=”42″ image_height=”42″ hover=”false” custom_url=”https://www.facebook.com/ASOResearch/” margin_bottom=”0″][mk_image src=”http://www.asortest.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/social-tw-icon4.jpg” image_width=”42″ image_height=”42″ hover=”false” custom_url=”https://twitter.com/ASOResearch?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor” margin_bottom=”0″][mk_image src=”http://www.asortest.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/social-in-icon4.jpg” image_width=”42″ image_height=”42″ hover=”false” custom_url=”https://www.linkedin.com/company/american-schools-of-oriental-research” margin_bottom=”0″][mk_image src=”http://www.asortest.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/social-ml-icon_7.jpg” image_width=”42″ image_height=”42″ hover=”false” custom_url=”mailto:asor@bu.edu” margin_bottom=”0″][mk_image src=”http://www.asortest.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/blog-icon3.jpg” image_width=”42″ image_height=”42″ hover=”false” custom_url=”http://asorblog.org/” margin_bottom=”0″][/vc_column][vc_column border_color=”rgba(255,255,255,0.01)” width=”1/6″ css=”.vc_custom_1496683923840{margin-right: 20px !important;border-left-width: 2px !important;padding-right: 20px !important;padding-left: 20px !important;border-left-color: #99422f !important;}”][mk_divider divider_color=”rgba(255,255,255,0.01)” thickness=”1″ margin_top=”3″ margin_bottom=”3″][vc_column_text] [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column border_color=”rgba(170,170,170,0.01)” width=”1/2″ css=”.vc_custom_1487276122024{margin-right: 10px !important;margin-bottom: 30px !important;border-right-width: 2px !important;border-bottom-width: 2px !important;padding-top: 30px !important;padding-right: 30px !important;padding-left: 20px !important;background-color: #ffffff !important;border-right-color: rgba(227,228,228,0.75) !important;border-bottom-color: rgba(227,228,228,0.75) !important;}”][vc_column_text responsive_align=”left”]MARCH FELLOWSHIP MADNESS 2013
[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]
It’s that time of year again! March Fellowship Madness is a month-long drive to raise as many fellowship dollars as possible, so we can get more students in the field! Last year, 80 donors joined in the madness and gave over $9,000. That meant that ASOR was able to award nine additional travel scholarships! That’s nine additional scholars who were able to conduct field research and expand our knowledge of the ancient Near East. How many more students can we send to the field this year?
As you know, ASOR’s mission is to support archaeology in the Near East, and now we have an exciting opportunity for you to support students of archaeology directly! ASOR is very fortunate to have some endowment funds that provide base level funding for scholarships. In addition, Heritage donors contribute $2,500 each to provide additional scholarships. These funding sources enable us to grant about 30 travel scholarships each year. While this support is generous, the need always exceeds what we have available. With shrinking academic budgets and with federal support shrinking as well, more and more students are applying for scholarships. This year we anticipate two to three times the applications than the available funds. We need ASOR’s members to make gifts of any size so that more students can go into the field. ASOR does not charge any administrative fee for gifts made during March Fellowship Madness, so 100% of your contribution supports students who have a demonstrated need.
Last Year ASOR awarded 42 scholarships, and our goal this year is to award 75 total grants (including the Harris Grants). Many of the gifts supporting these scholarships were small, but they added up. Rob Oden, ASOR development chair and president emeritus of Carleton College, has written a brief essay on the importance of these small donations: “Why All Gifts to ASOR Matter.” The short answer is that the smaller gifts add up and multiply and broad participation by ASOR’s members attracts major donors to provide transformative support. If 100 people donate $25, we will raise an additional $2,500 for scholarships. If another 50 people donate $50, we’ll add another $2,500. If 25 people give $100, then that is yet another $2,500. It’s not hard to see how the math adds up and how more and more students can go into the field. In addition, we have received two challenge gifts that will provide matching funds for gifts of any size, so all gifts are truly meaningful!
We hope that you will join the madness and help transform a student’s career by sending him or her into the field. Here’s what past fellowship recipients have said about their experiences:
“None of this would have been possible without ASOR’s Heritage Fellowship and all of the amazing people who donated their hard earned money to make the fellowships possible. I can’t thank you all enough for the amazing experience I was given.” –Stephanie Boonstra, 2012 Heritage Fellow
“Knowing that the work we accomplished this summer adds inch by inch toward a better understanding of the lives, economy, and industry of the people who inhabited the area so long ago makes me all the more grateful for the chance to be a part of the Tayinat excavations, and to the Heritage donors who made it possible.” -Emily Coate, 2012 Heritage Fellow
For first-hand testimonials of the importance of these excavation fellowships to students of archaeology, check out reports from last year’s fellowship recipients on the ASOR blog.
You can support archaeology in a very direct way by giving any amount to March Fellowship Madness. How many new fellowships can we raise fund with your donations in the month of March alone? Be a team player and donate before the buzzer sounds! Remember, 100% of your gift goes to support student scholarships.
Goals:
- Total number of donors: 100 (last year we had 80)
- Total amount of funds raised: $10,000 (last year we raised $9,200)
- Challenge gifts: Two trustees have pledged to donate an additional $5,000 to the Heritage Program if we meet our first two goals.
The William F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem is pleased to announce the winner of the twelfth annual competition for the Sean W. Dever Memorial Prize. This award offers $650 for the best published article or paper presented at a conference by a Ph.D. candidate in Syro-Palestinian or Biblical Archaeology. Authors may be of any nationality but the article or paper must be in English.
Their paper, “A Moabite-Inscribed Statue Fragment from Kerak: Possible Egyptian Parallels,” was presented at the 2011 Annual Meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research and at the 2011 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, both in San Francisco.
Though Dr. Detweiler’s later career was filled with the administrative duties required by his position as president of ASOR, his love of archeology and excavating still thrived as he remained active at several different excavations. Particularly interesting is the excavation to Sardis that he led from 1958-1961 with the help of George A. Hanfmann. From this expedition, the archive offers interesting stories and helps us gain a better understanding of Sardis and President Detweiler himself.
The Sardis excavation cemented its popularity with the media as Dr. Detweiler corresponded with people from the Motion Picture Service, WGBH, Life, and National Geographic, among others, to negotitate article and film deals about the findings at Sardis. (see Telegram from Motion Picture Services at above right) Unfortunately it seems that a Sardis movie never did surface, but the magazine articles probably did appear in the end.
ASOR has grown and changed a lot in the six plus years since I was elected treasurer. One way in which we have changed is setting clear expectations for our new trustees. As a result, many of our newest trustees are providing generous financial support for ASOR that has allowed us to make investments to begin implementing our long-term strategic plan.
I actually see a lot of parallels in my business of investing in publicly traded stocks. Stocks aren’t just pieces of paper, they are businesses. A lot of my work involves research on the computer, reading annual reports and regulatory filings and getting access to numbers, numbers and more numbers. But a key part of forming a judgment on whether a business is a good business or one to avoid requires me to get out of the office, visit the company and its sites. As an example, we own stock in Bed Bath & Beyond. I imagine most of our ASOR members have shopped at Bed Bath. Well, as part of my work, I visit Bed Bath stores, talk to their store managers, experiment with ordering on their website and compare their prices to Amazon. And now, with the arrival of my first grandbaby, I am doing the same amount of due diligence on their other store concept, BuyBuy Baby.
In a fundraising campaign with an ambitious six- or seven-figure number, do small gifts matter? Why should we all stretch to give what we can even if a stretch gift for some of us is $25, $50, or $100? Do $25 or $50 gifts to ASOR’s Annual Fund matter?
Twenty minutes into my carefully rehearsed presentation, the donor politely lifted his hand—a gesture that I sensed meant he wished me to cease speaking. I stopped talking. “All that you have said,” the potential donor began, “is to the point and none of this is without merit. We do need to ensure that a first-rate liberal arts education is accessible to all talented students, whatever their families’ income level, and we do need properly to honor our faculty. But thoughts such as these are not going to move me to make a leadership gift. What I want to know and what might well motivate me is an answer to this question: ‘What percentage of our graduates give to the Annual Fund every year? There is no more accurate or reliable way to gauge the value our graduates place upon their education than their willingness to contribute each year—and I don’t care how large their annual gifts are.’”
ASOR is pleased to announce Dr. Lynn Swartz Dodd of the University of Southern California (USC) as our new Secretary. The ASOR Board of Trustees voted unanimously at its fall meeting on November 18, 2012 to elect Dodd to a three-year term (2013-2015) as ASOR Secretary and member of the Executive Committee. Dodd succeeds Prof. James F. Strange of the University of South Florida who served as Secretary for three terms and more than ten years. Prof. Strange continues his service to ASOR as a member of the board of trustees (Class of 2015).
It’s almost time for March Fellowship Madness again, when we try to raise as many fellowship dollars as possible in thirty days. February 20th is the deadline for students and junior scholars to