I Love UAA: Jo and Peter Michalski

Jo and Peter Michalski's commitment to UAA started years ago with an evening at the UAA Department of Culinary Arts fundraiser, the Celebrity Chef Invitational. Even without the delicious meal, though, they would've been on board supporting UAA. Their philosophy of support is simple. "We give where we live," says Jo.

College sweethearts who met and married in Minnesota, the Michalskis came to Alaska in the '70s thinking they'd stay for two years. "It's everybody's story," says Jo with a smile. More than 40 years later, they're retired with a full slate of community involvement activities, promoting philanthropy in the arts and education.

"Alaska is our home and we want to make the place better, even better than we found it," says Peter.

They fell in love with Alaska as a young couple, finally settling in Anchorage with one young son and another on the way. They'd spent several years in Juneau and Fairbanks, where Jo earned a graduate degree in education from UAF and Peter gained experience with the Department of Law.

"We had a great four years there," says Peter of their time in Fairbanks. "If it didn't get below 40 below, we might still be there."

Luckily Anchorage offered a bump up on the thermometer. Jo ventured into business ownership, becoming a successful entrepreneur while Peter became a Third Judicial District judge.

Before they were donors to UAA, though, they were university neighbors living in College Village.

While in Fairbanks, they took advantage of all the events and facilities UAF had to offer community members. "When we moved down here, we started using UAA the same way we were using UAF," says Jo. "We had young children. I took them swimming at the pool, we went over there for arts events."

"We went to a lot of theatre," adds Peter.

An invitation to the Celebrity Chef event at the Cuddy Center turned them into donors. "Our friends Betsy and David Lawer invited us the first or second year they had it," says Jo. "We've been every year since the beginning."

"It grew from there," says Peter of their support for UAA. "There are so many wonderful things this university does. If a person wants to make a community better, and who shouldn't want to do that? There are any number of ways to pick a program and get behind it, not the least of which is scholarships-to culinary arts, to liberal arts, to engineering. It's fundamental to developing our people. We are nothing if we don't do that."

Jo and Peter are also dedicated supporters of the Kachemak Bay Writers' Conference. Jo has worked closely with Kachemak Bay Campus Director Carol Swartz to increase philanthropic support of the annual event that brings top writers to Homer each year for a week of interaction with Alaska writers at every level.

"I think it's a real jewel of UAA," she says.

Their bookshelves are stocked with volumes from conference writers past and future.

"One of the things we've done for seven or eight years now is host a thank-you party for all the other donors to the conference," says Jo. "All these wonderful writers come to our house with other donors and over the years we've been able to meet some fascinating people, like Michael Cunningham who wrote The Hours, Jeffrey Eugenides who wrote Middlesex and got the Pulitzer for that, and Amy Tan, Annie Lamott, Billy Collins, Li-Young Lee."

"This year it's Naomi Shihab Nye," says Peter. They weren't familiar with her work, but they bought her books and have been doing their "homework" before the conference in June.

"Wow, she is really excellent," says Jo.

"It's expanded our rather narrow horizons," says Peter with a laugh. "That's exactly what a university is supposed to do!"

Jo currently chairs the University of Alaska Foundation Board of Trustees and serves on the College of Arts and Sciences advisory board. She and Peter are looking forward the upcoming writers' conference.

They see their support of UAA as a give-and-take, both in the personal sense and in the larger sense as members of a community. "We are both graduates of a state university system and, while it's wonderful to have private colleges, our donations in higher education go exclusively to public education, because it provides educational opportunities across the board that more people can take advantage of-ideally everybody, because the cost is less," says Jo.

In addition to reading Naomi Shihab Nye, they enjoyed reading the roll call of UAA's newest graduates recently published in the Anchorage Daily News.

"We have a university we can be very proud of," says Peter, "Not just for its sports teams, though we're very proud of those, but it's a wonderful institution we can be proud of for the graduates it produces."

"We just want to encourage everybody to support the university to the extent that they can. There truly is an area for everybody to support," says Jo. "That's what's so wonderful."

Jo and Peter joined the ranks of our leadership donors to become College of Fellows members in 2001.