Faculty Receives $1.5 Million Gift to Benefit Graduate Students

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Dr. Ursula Abbott wanted to leave a legacy. And thanks to her planned gift, she’s done just that.

Born in 1927, Dr. Abbott was one of only a handful of female students enrolled in our Faculty during the 1940s. She earned her BSc and MSc in Poultry and Genetics at UBC, before completing her PhD in Genetics at the University of California, Berkeley. She worked at the University of California, Davis, where she taught and carried out research in developmental genetics until her retirement in 1992.

When Dr. Abbott passed away in January 2012, $1.5 million of her estate was gifted to our Faculty to use for graduate travel scholarships. Dr. Abbott’s research took her all over the world and she recognized the importance of travel to the student experience.

The Ursula Knight Abbott Travel Scholarship was established to enable LFS graduate students to travel to laboratories where specific techniques needed to further their research are already in place.

[Reprinted with permission from http://reachout.landfood.ubc.ca/faculty-receives-1-5-million-gift-to-benefit-graduate-students/]