Helen LiFeber-Rosener '60

From Scholarship Recipient to Scholarship Donor

Earning her bachelor's and master's degrees from Geneseo, Helen LiFeber-Rosener '60 worked hard inside the classroom and out. She covered expenses toiling summers at home and holding two campus jobs during the school year. Two scholarships made up the balance. After nearly three decades teaching - with a seven-year hiatus in business - Helen retired in 2001 and married the love of her life, only to be widowed a year later.

Throughout her life, she kept her spirit and her gratitude, and Geneseo took on a different significance. In 2006, the long-time annual fund donor created the Helen LiFeber-Rosener '60 Scholarship in the School of Education, and funded it for seven years. Four years later, she extended the scholarship and doubled it. She's aided two students every year since.

In 2010, Helen put Geneseo in her will for five percent of her estate. A year later she raised it to ten percent. And a year after that to fifteen. When Helen died in 2013, she left an endowment of more than a quarter million dollars that will fund her scholarship in perpetuity. Meaning that - for time everlasting - Helen LiFeber-Rosener Scholars will receive the scholarship help they need to make a difference. As did Helen herself.