Mary Laurens W. Richardson was the daughter of William A. Withers, who founded the Department of Chemistry at NC State. 

Richardson, herself an NC State alumna, passed away in 1988. The university named Withers Hall — the chemistry department’s current home — to honor her father’s contributions, and Richardson honored his service in her own way by leaving a gift to NC State in her will to fund the William A. Withers Endowment. Likely understanding the importance of unrestricted giving, the only directive she left was for the funding to be allocated at the discretion of the chair of the department. 

Since then, Richardson’s love for her father has helped shape NC State’s chemistry department, and nearly 40 years after her passing, students and faculty are finding a family that transcends international borders. 

For the last 15 years, the Withers endowment has been making a difference by waiving application fees for prospective graduate students. 

Reza Ghiladi, the head of the chemistry department and the previous director of graduate programs, explained that the endowment waives the fee for all US citizens and permanent residents, and a portion of international applicants. 

“In order for us to remain competitive as a Research 1 institution, we have to recruit as much top talent as we can,” Ghiladi said. “We need to remove any barriers for students applying to our program, which means no application fees for domestic students.”

“Some students can afford the fee and some can’t. We want to even the playing field.”

This is common for graduate chemistry programs in the US. In addition to waiving fees, NC State’s chemistry department does not require GRE test scores or official transcripts during the review process. Both represent an additional cost for applicants who are often applying to multiple programs. 

“Some students can afford the fee and some can’t. We want to even the playing field,” Ghiladi said. 

Most of the funding generated by the endowment is used for the approximately 150-200 domestic students who apply each year and the remainder waives the fee for select international students who often apply at three times the rate of domestic students. 

Ghiladi emphasized that covering the fee for all international students likely would result in  too many applicants for the department to realistically review. To combat this, the department invites international students to submit a portion of their application materials, and if they seem like a competitive candidate, the department will waive their fee. Additionally, any international student who reaches out personally to request a fee waiver usually receives it. 

Beyond these interpersonal interactions, some international students receive fee waivers by virtue of their country of origin, like recent Ph.D. graduate Toan Ho.

Ho learned about NC State through the chemistry department’s Vietnam recruitment initiative. 

“The Department of Chemistry’s dedicated outreach in Vietnam stood out. Faculty members like Dr. Jonathan Lindsey and Dr. Reza Ghiladi worked tirelessly to build direct pipelines with Vietnamese universities. Knowing the department actively valued and sought out Vietnamese talent made me feel welcomed from the start,” Ho said. 

Ghiladi cited the beginning of this international relationship stemming from a uniquely impressive student working in Professor Jonathan Lindsey’s lab in 2018. Curious about the student’s academic background, Lindsey travelled to the student’s undergraduate university to learn more about its chemistry program, and when Ghiladi became the director of graduate programs in 2020, Lindsey suggested he visit as well. 

What they found was a school with over 2,000 undergraduate chemistry majors. On average, there are about 250 or so total chemistry majors at NC State. Vietnam’s saturation of students interested in chemistry results in part from the petrochemical industries where they can find work in Malaysia and China. But for students who want to go further into research, institutions abroad are where they set their sights. 

“The application fee waiver offer for Vietnamese students was absolutely critical.”

For Ho, NC State’s preestablished connection in Vietnam and its location in the Research Triangle made it an appealing choice, and with the average Vietnamese family making a salary equivalent to $200 per month, the fee waiver was a necessity. 

“The application fee waiver offer for Vietnamese students was absolutely critical. The $95 USD application fee is a heavy financial burden when converted to Vietnamese Đồng, especially when applying to multiple schools. By proactively offering this waiver to competitive Vietnamese applicants, the chemistry department completely removed that financial barrier. It made NC State appealing because it proved the university was genuinely invested in welcoming top scientific talent from Vietnam based on academic merit,” Ho said. 

“[The Withers Endowment] gets you a student who has not had an economic barrier to being admitted into a program. A student who has the ability to teach undergraduates, to research and drive federal funding and to serve in the community.”

When considering all the costs associated with higher education, application fees seem minimal by comparison. Ghiladi talks about the ripple effect of the Withers Endowment by explaining that, aside from their majors, there are 5,000 students at NC State taking chemistry courses and labs. While the faculty teach those classes, the graduate students who are TAs are playing a critical role in undergraduate learning. And when they aren’t in class or taking classes themselves, they’re doing research toward their dissertation. 

“[Waiving the fee] gets you a student. It gets you a student who has not had an economic barrier to being admitted into a program. A student who has the ability, now, to teach undergraduates, to research and drive the federal funding that comes into our department and to serve in the community,” Ghiladi explained. “That’s really what the Withers Endowment enables us to do.”

Because the endowment is not restricted, department leadership has been able to direct it where they see needs or opportunities. Ghiladi said more unrestricted endowments would give the department the flexibility to address other needs of graduate students, like adding funds to their stipend or covering their student fees. 

“Our graduate students are like an extension of our families.”

“Graduate student life is difficult. Having access to unrestricted funds means we can use it to make life a little easier,” Ghiladi said.

Those are just the tangible examples of what unrestricted funding can achieve. The abstract outcomes are the foundational relationships in the community that attracts top talent to NC State and supports their academic pursuits. It’s why Ho advises prospective international students to, “[Not] hesitate to lean on the community from day one.”  

Ghiladi also emphasizes the communal experience of graduate studies at NC State. “Our graduate students are like an extension of our families,” he said. “When we look at what an advisor-advisee, mentor-mentee type relationship turns out to be, it’s more of a multigenerational family investment in each other’s success that really is what is underlying the degree and that educational experience.”

Multigenerational family investment is exactly the right way to put it. When Mary Richardson’s father William A. Withers founded the chemistry department at NC State, he had already cemented his legacy here. By giving in honor of his service, Richardson ensured that his legacy and her own did not end at the sign in front of the building. Her generosity has shaped a generation of chemistry leaders and will continue to shape more.