Philanthropy
A philanthropic organization, the ANAK Society annually awards two undergraduate student scholarships, the George Wingfield Semmes Memorial Scholarship and the Merri Gaye Hitt Memorial Scholarship. Semmes and Hitt were both Georgia Tech alumni and ANAK members; Semmes, the Class of 1910 and Hitt, the Class of 1977. Additionally, the society annually recognizes distinguished Georgia Tech alumni with the Joseph M. Pettit Distinguished Service Award (formerly the ANAK Service Award). Finally, since 1942 (annually since 1947), the society has presented the ANAK Award to an outstanding Georgia Tech faculty member. This award is considered "the highest honor the undergraduate student body can bestow on a Georgia Tech faculty member". For example, upon his retirement in 1999, Georgia Tech professor David J. McGill recalled winning the ANAK Award in 1990 as the highlight of his teaching career, despite having also won two Outstanding Teaching Awards (in 1974 and 1986) and being named the Carnegie Foundation's Professor of the Year for the state of Georgia in 1996.
The ANAK Society has donated a number of gifts to Georgia Tech. In 1921, the society donated a staircase connecting Tech Tower to the D. P. Savant Building. The staircase bears a plaque naming ANAK as the benefactor, one of very few conspicuous declarations of the society's existence on the Georgia Tech campus. On September 26, 1947, ANAK presented a life-size bronze bust of Georgia Tech football head coach William A. Alexander to the Georgia Tech Athletic Association to commemorate the society's 40th anniversary. The bust was sculpted by Julian H. Harris, a noted sculptor, architect, and Georgia Tech professor from 1936 to 1972. Along with the Class of 1924, ANAK gifted a portrait of William Henry Emerson, Georgia Tech's first dean, to Georgia Tech in 1924. The portrait was painted by noted Atlanta artist Kate Edwards. After being lost some time in the 1980s, the portrait was found and restored in the early 1990s. It has hung in the atrium of the Lyman Hall Building since October 15, 1992. Along with the Omicron Delta Kappa honor society, ANAK was involved in the dedication of the Paul G. Mayer Memorial Garden on May 30, 1987. The garden, located between the Georgia Tech Library and the William Vernon Skiles Classroom Building, features a plaque bearing the lidless eye symbol of the ANAK Society.
In 2002, the ANAK Society donated a collection of its records from 1948 to 1983 to Georgia Tech. The records are publicly available through the Georgia Tech Library's Archives and Records Management Department and include constitutions, anniversary dinner invitations, and member directories.
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Famous quotes containing the word philanthropy:
“I shall not be forward to think him mistaken in his method who quickest succeeds to liberate the slave. I speak for the slave when I say that I prefer the philanthropy of Captain Brown to that philanthropy which neither shoots me nor liberates me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... the hey-day of a woman’s life is on the shady side of fifty, when the vital forces heretofore expended in other ways are garnered in the brain, when their thoughts and sentiments flow out in broader channels, when philanthropy takes the place of family selfishness, and when from the depths of poverty and suffering the wail of humanity grows as pathetic to their ears as once was the cry of their own children.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
“Almost every man we meet requires some civility,—requires to be humored; he has some fame, some talent, some whim of religion or philanthropy in his head that is not to be questioned, and which spoils all conversation with him. But a friend is a sane man who exercises not my ingenuity, but me.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)