Going the extra mile: Kris Nordgren

As both an SFU graduate and staff member, and a proud parent of a current SFU student, Kris has a deeply personal connection to SFU.

For more than a decade, Kris has supported alumni scholarship and bursaries, including monthly contributions toward the Indigenous and Black Graduate Scholarship in Biology.

What specifically motivated you to support SFU?

My motivation is that there are students who need support to pursue a postsecondary degree and may not have the financial resources elsewhere to do it. Given my strong connection to the university as an alumnus, staff, and now SFU parent, I wanted to give back.

What impact of your support have you seen at the university?

I work with the Senate and am the secretary to the Senate Committee on Scholarships, Awards and Bursaries. Every year, the committee submits a report to the Senate that includes new scholarships and bursaries that have been established, and a financial accounting of how these funds have been distributed. While my contribution is a “drop in the bucket,” seeing the millions of dollars that have been provided to undergraduate and graduate students makes me feel like that “drop in the bucket” is helping out.

How would you encourage other staff and faculty to give?

I would remind my fellow SFU colleagues that it doesn’t take much to add up to a lot—there are a few thousand staff and faculty, so that’s a lot of “drops” to fill up the bucket. But we are living in challenging and uncertain times—with the SFU budget taking a big hit and the Canadian economy impacted by significant political changes—so I understand that it may be a challenge for some.