Graduate students drive much of the day-to-day work behind scientific progress. As Fikret Isik puts it, they’re the “workhorses of academic research.”

“They are the ones in the labs, in the greenhouses and in front of computers for a lot of long days and nights. Without them, I cannot imagine how research could get done,” said Isik, a professor of forestry and environmental resources at NC State.

Isik’s perspective underscores why he and his partner, Paula Barnes Cardinale, decided to make a $50,000 planned gift this summer to support graduate students interested in production forestry and forest health, especially tree breeding, Isik’s passion. 

Planned gifts such as bequests or designated funds allow donors to contribute through their estate plans, supporting important causes like scholarships, research and campus developments that align with their personal values and long-term goals.

This couple’s gift will fund supplemental stipends, with priority given to North Carolina residents in the Cooperative Tree Improvement Program, followed by students from other states and those in the forest genetics program.

Each semester, half a dozen graduate students conduct research to help Isik and Trevor Walker, co-directors of the Tree Improvement Program, fight diseases that threaten southern pines, a major export and income source for rural communities in the South.

“Without funding, a lot of bright students won’t be able to afford to go to graduate school — and our research will suffer,” Isik said.

Personal Experience Informs Giving

Isik and Barnes Cardinale know the challenges students face. They both had to fund their own education.

“I was born to illiterate parents in a remote part of Turkey. I got lucky to be accepted to government-run boarding schools throughout my education,” Isik said. “We were very poor. While in college in Istanbul, I worked jobs like issuing tickets at the bus station to earn money to cover my expenses. Difficult times, for sure.”

After receiving master’s and doctoral degrees in Turkey, Isik was awarded a NATO-B1 Scholarship to conduct research in a NATO member country; he chose to go to NC State’s Tree Improvement Program and subsequently was offered a post-doctoral position.

It was the start of a new life in a new country at a new institution, Isik said, and a decade of writing grant requests for funding. Ten years later, in 2011, a couple of large seed companies offered him full-time senior-level positions — but the university didn’t want to lose him.

“The Tree Improvement Program and the university had already provided a lot of opportunities and resources for me to grow as a scientist. So when NC State offered me a tenure-track position, I decided to decline the offers from large seed companies and stay where I was,” Isik said.

It was around this time that Isik met Barnes Cardinale. She grew up in Wake County, North Carolina, with parents who could afford to contribute just $100 a semester to her tuition. She earned a degree in mathematics with the help of scholarships and the work-study program and later financed a master’s degree in library science on her own.

Barnes Cardinale went on to devote more than 30 years to teaching elementary, middle and high school students in her community.  Now retired from the classroom, she tutors and works with a small nonprofit school serving 2E (twice-exceptional) students. 

Needless to say, education is important to this pair.

“Fikret and I had been talking about wanting to do something for students at NC State for a couple of years. We definitely wanted to help where Fikret’s passion is,” Barnes Cardinale said. “So I made the call” to the College of Natural Resources.

Encouragement for the Best and Brightest 

Isik and Barnes Cardinale have discussed at length what it will take to encourage exceptional students to pursue scientific careers. 

“There’s a lot of demand for bright students, but we don’t get as many applicants from the United States as from international students. I hope the endowment Paula and I started will bring them out. We want them to be able to travel to conferences to present their research and get to know the scientific world,” Isik said.

“In the past 15 or 20 years, this country has not grown the number of students who are interested in being scientists. I suspect it’s more a matter of how much money you can earn over a career than a lack of desire. This country doesn’t value scientists enough,” Barnes Cardinale said. “We want to help people grow in their scientific field, and we want them to feel like other people find their work significant.” 

In short, she said, they want to extend the support Isik received when he was a young student and hope to encourage others to consider doing so.

“If others wonder whether they should give, they might ask themselves, ‘Did someone help me? Did someone encourage me? Can I pay forward some of the help that made me more successful?’ Even if it’s just $5, you’ve done something. And if you can’t give money, you can give time,” Barnes Cardinale said.

“That was well said,” Isik agreed. “You know, it feels good to give back to the community that helped you to be successful. It’s just the right thing to do.” 

This article was written by Cindy Dashnaw Jackson for the College of Natural Resources.