KU News Release

University leaders unveil senior class gift

LAWRENCE — The gift from the Class of 2008 is now in place.

The senior class gift is a brick inlay embedded in the sidewalk outside of the Ambler Student Recreation Fitness Center.

Each year, KU’s Board of Class Officers and the Senior Advisory Board decide on the senior class gift. They partner with KU Endowment to raise funds, in part by providing senior class T-shirts to graduates who make contributions. The full amount of all donations is applied toward the purchase of the class gift.

KU’s tradition of senior class gifts stretches back to 1873 and often is the first step students take in carrying on the tradition of KU alumni giving back to the university. Past gifts have included a bird bath near Lippincott Hall (Class of 1903), crab apple trees (Class of 1945) and the creation of the HOPE Award for professors (Class of 1959). The Class of 2007’s gift helped refurbish the organ in Danforth Chapel.

The senior class gift fund is managed by KU Endowment, the independent, nonprofit organization serving as the official fundraising and fund-management foundation for KU. Founded in 1891, KU Endowment is the first foundation of its kind at a public university in the United States.

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