Transforming the Student Experience
WE ARE TRANSFORMING THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE
The UW’s public mission promises all students access to excellence. Through the campaign, philanthropy has increased the opportunities that define the Husky Experience: scholarships and support services that make it possible for a diverse community of students to attend the UW and know that they belong here; endowments that attract and retain the very best professors; opportunities for students to engage in faculty-led research; study abroad, service learning, career connections and community internship opportunities; and a broad array of activities that ensure a rich student life.
LEARN AND GROW
Frances Brock Templeton was tireless. From the 1950s to the 1990s, she and her two children worked the family’s five–acre property in Bellevue, Washington, tending apple, cherry and prune trees, and taking care of blueberry and boysenberry bushes. They kept the land cleared, cared for beef cattle and boarded horses, and canned many types of fruit.
Mike and Frances Brock in 2018
It’s worth mentioning that, in addition to being a mother and farmer, Frances was also a full-time nurse at UW Medical Center. “Mother worked just as hard at the hospital as she did at home,” says her son, Mike Brock.
Mike remembers that his mother — a recovery nurse in the organ transplant clinic at the medical center — kept her uniforms starched, ironed and spotless. More importantly, he remembers her professionalism, her high standards and her kindness.
“She was a very good nurse,” Mike says, “always very empathetic with the people in her care. Caring for patients was her mission in life.”
Since Mike’s graduation from college in 1965 until his mother’s death in 2009, Mike and his wife, Hilda, traveled monthly from the Bay Area back to Bellevue. Mike, now a mortgage brokerage and wine industry retiree, and Hilda, a retired Silicon Valley brokerage executive, still tend the farm: cutting grass, clearing blackberries and pruning fruit trees.
Mike Brock holding a family photo in 2018
While the Brocks stay busy keeping up the grounds, they have also created a long-term plan for the property. In 2018, they made a pledge to create the Frances Brock Templeton Endowed Scholarship Fund for undergraduate and graduate nursing students.
As they contemplate this pledge today, Mike and Hilda can’t help but think of the COVID-19 pandemic sweeping the country and the perennial need for a strong nursing workforce. “We’re so grateful to be able to give something to the nursing profession — which has given so much to our communities —when the need for nurses in the future will be so great,” says Mike.
The pledge also prompts Azita Emami Ph.D., MSN, RNT, R.N., FAAN, the Robert G. and Jean A. Reid Executive Dean of the UW School of Nursing, to think about the future.
“It’s simply a wonderful gift,” says Emami. “Scholarships are so important to our students, and it’s splendid to think that Frances will be remembered by a new generation of nurses.”
When Mike remembers his mother, he thinks about her dedication to nursing, to community service and, of course, to his boyhood home.
“We’ve taken care of that farm for 76 years,” says Mike. ”It’s good to know that someday our gift will help students grow into nurses, so they can keep taking care of all of us — including me!”