Universiteit Leiden

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Carel Stolker to retire: donate to the Leiden Empowerment Funds

Carel Stolker will retire as Rector Magnificus of Leiden University on 8 February. As a retirement gift he is setting up a fund for first-generation students and academics. You too can donate.

First-generation students and academics – possibly from an immigrant background – face all sorts of barriers during their studies and research. They have considerably less access to networks within and outside the University, and a lack of financial resources often hampers their studies or research.

About the LEF

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To support this group, a special fund has been set up to mark Stolker’s retirement: the Leiden Empowerment Fund (LEF). Financial support from the LEF will help talented first-generation students and academics achieve their ambitions. The money can be used for a buddy system or grants for study or research abroad.

‘At school and university, I had so much support from my parents and the environment I grew up in. My mother was in business and my father was the first student to graduate in psychology in Leiden (1952). I had so much luck and help, therefore.’

Donate to the LEF

If you would like to give Carel Stolker a retirement gift, why not donate to the new Leiden Empowerment Fund (LEF)? 

Stolker continues: ‘As a lecturer, dean and rector, I have always admired pupils and students who had to do it on their own, who had to find their own way to university. It is these students, often first-generation students, that I want to help with the new Leiden Empowerment Fund. It is them that I want my retirement gift to go towards, via the LUF.’  

The LEF will belong to the Leiden University Fund (LUF).

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