Jerrold, Carol Zar contribute to
Barsema Alumni and Visitors Center

by Mark McGowan

Jerrold and Carol Zar’s fervent devotion to NIU, their shared alma mater and workplace, is easy to see.

The Zars have made several gifts to the university over the decades, spreading a substantial amount of dollars across more than 50 departmental and college funds, as well as Northern Public Radio, Founders Memorial Library, the Division of Student Affairs and Intercollegiate Athletics. They also have endowed two scholarships for undergraduate students.

Now they have given their largest gift ever: $50,000 to the new Barsema Alumni and Visitors Center. It will build an outdoor terrace, named in their honor, adjacent to the John and Nancy Castle Faculty Library.

Their gift also is expected to inspire other faculty to pledge financial support.

“We’ve made contributions for many, many years in a variety of ways, to many different departments and activities. The Alumni and Visitors Center caught our eye, primarily because we’re both alumni and longtime beneficiaries of what the university has to offer,” said Jerry, who retired in 2002 after an 18-year term as dean of the Graduate School and vice provost for Graduate Studies and Research.

“It should serve as an attractive gateway to the university, a place for alumni and visitors to learn about the university, either as an introduction during their first time here or to reminisce about past times.”

“It’s a facility that is filling a need, not just for the university, but for the whole community,” added Carol, assistant director of NIU’s Center for Governmental Studies. “I’m certain it will have heavy use, not just from alumni but university supporters in DeKalb and Sycamore, whether they’re alumni or not. That’s a piece of it that’s important to me.”

Ground was broken Homecoming weekend on the two-and-a-half story, 37,000-square-foot Barsema Alumni and Visitors Center.

Located on the southwest corner of Annie Glidden Road and Stadium Drive, the building will boast state-of-the-art meeting and conference facilities and office space for the NIU Alumni Association, the NIU Student Alumni Association and representatives from the admissions and orientation offices.

Its centerpiece is the Great Hall featuring plaques, displays and exhibits highlighting the history of NIU and the accomplishments of the university’s alumni. The NIU Foundation is serving as developer and financing construction of the building, which it will turn over to the university when the debt has been retired.

Jerry and Carol also believe the prominent acknowledgement of outstanding professors through showcasing their scholarship inside the library will boost recruitment of new students, all of whom will start their campus tours in the center. “Showing off your star faculty is important,” Carol said.

To the Zars, the new facility also reflects a university moving forward.

“For us to continue to contribute to so many causes over so many years shows that we think the university is advancing and doing good things. This gift is filling a niche that hasn’t been met before,” Jerry said. “It also doesn’t mean our contributions will stop.”

Jerry came here in 1958, completing his bachelor’s degree in biology four years later. He pursued graduate studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he met Carol, who was earning her bachelor’s degree there.

When Jerry was ready to begin teaching, he and his new wife came to NIU. He spent his initial years here teaching biology and conducting research into physiological adaptations of animals to their environment and statistical analysis of biological data.

In 1974, Prentice Hall published his book, “Biostatistical Analysis.” A fourth edition of the book was published in 1999, and he has a publisher’s contract to write the fifth edition.

Named chair of the Department of Biological Sciences in 1978, he continued to teach and wrote the last half-dozen of 13 proposals for a Ph.D. program until it finally was approved by the Illinois Board of Higher Education. In the meantime, faculty in the department stepped up research and achieved a strong balance between teaching and scholarship.

Carol spent her first years in DeKalb as a full-time mother and homemaker and, when her children began school, resumed her education. She earned an NIU master’s degree in public affairs.

In her first NIU job, in the Division of Public Administration, she served as intern coordinator. Four years later, she moved to the Center for Governmental Studies.

Carol continues to provide support that improves local government in Illinois, working with city managers, village clerks, elected officials, leaders of not-for-profit agencies and others in the municipal arena “to make the way we run our communities more professional.”

She also has served as the executive director of the Illinois City/County Management Association and on the board of directors of Mainstreet/DeKalb Inc., a downtown historic preservation and revitalization effort.

The Zars now are grandparents (they have a son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter in St. Louis and another son in Madison), and Jerry keeps busy as an author, a consultant for the Council of Graduate Schools (the national association of graduate school administrators) and playing his trumpet in the Kishwaukee Symphony Orchestra and other local ensembles.

For more information about the Barsema Alumni and Visitors Center and the many opportunities to give, call (815) 753-1048.

12-13-04