‘This is My Legacy’: Gratitude Drives Giving for Corey Schultz ’97

Corey Schultz has included the College as a beneficiary of a retirement plan.

Scholarship funds made attending Kalamazoo College possible for Corey Schultz ’97, and she values being able to “continue that chain and give back.”

“I was always academically successful, and I very much enjoyed learning about the world,” Schultz said. “I liked the size of K, and I liked the individual attention. I definitely could not have gone there if I hadn’t had financial assistance.”

Her scholarship allowed Schultz to double major in English literature and classical studies with a minor in economics, live on campus, and study abroad in Strasbourg, France.

“It gave me the ability to pursue not just the bare bones of an undergraduate education, but intellectual luxuries like study abroad that were broadening experiences,” Schultz said. “The scholarship afforded me the whole package. It was very, very generous as I recall.”

Schultz is particularly grateful for her study abroad experiences.

“I lived with a family for four months, and then I was able to take two months and travel,” Schultz said. “I got a Eurail pass and went everywhere from the west of France to Copenhagen, down to Italy, Greece, North Africa, Tunisia. As a classicist, I wanted to see the harbor in Carthage, to see places I'd read about in all those classes. It was really spectacular to me that K afforded me that opportunity.”

An internship with the Small Business Development Center also provided Schultz with pivotal life experiences, working with community members from all parts of the business spectrum.

The sense of community and strong, lasting relationships made K special to Schultz.

“It was the first time in my life I'd been in a place where people were kind and forgiving as the baseline,” she said. “They were welcoming and open and would invite people to social events and were always willing to help.”

When Schultz decided to join the military after graduation, she worried about her inability to drive a stick shift. Her classmate, Alexandra Altman ’97, volunteered to teach her not only to drive a stick shift, but to do so on the hills around campus.

Many years after graduating, Schultz had a cousin headed to K, and she tracked down local classmates she hadn’t seen in years to ask if she could introduce her cousin to them.

“They took her in with open arms,” Schultz said. “The relationships are spectacular: long-term relationships that you have for life.”

As a student, Schultz did not know much about the specifics of the scholarships she received, yet she had the sense that they were funded by generous donors, often alumni.

“I knew the scholarships were keeping me from living hand to mouth,” Schultz said. “You hear about in the ‘60s, where you could work a summer job and then pay the next semester. By the ’90s, and certainly now, you can't do that. The amount of money you need for the next semester, a young person can't make over the summer, so the scholarships were instrumental. They were life changing. At the time, I thought it would be nice to be in that position, to do well enough in life that you were able to give something back.”

Bolstered by her stick shift abilities, Schultz did join the military, was commissioned as a military officer, and worked many years in public relations.

“The classical studies, the Greek and Latin, the bones of what became our language and English literature helped me immeasurably in terms of writing and communicating,” Schultz said. “My experiences at K also made me able to talk to people from all different backgrounds. It seems to me there are a lot of people in this world who can only talk to people who are like them, but I was able to find commonalities with people from whom I needed a certain outcome from at work.”

After retiring, Schultz moved to San Antonio and recently started law school.

“It was something I had thought about doing in undergrad,” she said. “A bunch of my friends were studying for the LSAT, and I was like, ‘Well, maybe I'll join the military. Maybe I'll work for a bank. Maybe I’ll get a job in sales for a pharmaceutical company. I'm not sure.’ My friend Bridgette said, ‘Why don't you just take the LSAT?’ I saw what they were going through preparing for that while trying to study for finals, and I was like, ‘I think I'll take the LSAT later.’ And I did—25 years later. I was on the dean's list first semester, so the undergrad foundation at K set me up well for law school all these years later.”

Schultz would like to use her law degree to help people in her community—maybe some type of legal aid or veterans’ clinic work. In the meantime, she has found herself in that place she imagined as a student at K. She gives regularly to the College, and she has named K as a beneficiary of her Thrift Savings Plan, a retirement savings and investment plan for federal employees and members of the uniformed services—an easy and seamless process.

“I've worked hard all my life, made some good investments,” she said. “I’ve never had kids, never wanted kids. I have a generous pension, and I want the money to go to someone who can use it and who will go on to do good things with it. When you meet people, they often ask, ‘Do you have kids?’ and giving back to K has changed my answer. Now I feel that I have a world full of children.

“This is my legacy, that I can give to somebody what was given to me so generously. I hope it gives somebody the opportunity to expand their intellectual horizons, experience opportunities they wouldn’t have otherwise, and to make lifelong friends.”