Karen Poole flipped through her Fairmont State yearbook recently and realized how significant so many professors and friends who she met while attending college were to her success in life.

“Back then, I did not realize how important they were and that someday I would be in a position to give back in such a major way,” said Poole, who recently made Fairmont State University the beneficiary of 5 percent of the residuary of her estate to support the School of Education, Health & Human Performance.

For the first time in its 60-year history, the Fairmont State Foundation will provide more than $1 million in scholarships and programmatic support to Fairmont State University on July 1. 

The Fairmont State Foundation board voted in late February to fund 4 percent of earnings to the University, which will be about $1,054,000. The amount of funding the foundation has been able to provide to the university increased by nearly 82 percent since 2017, when the total amount was at $578,000.

Paulina Nottingham has joined the Fairmont State Foundation staff as the new director of development.

Nottingham, who holds a both a bachelor’s degree in marketing and an MBA with an emphasis in nonprofit management from West Virginia Wesleyan College in Buckhannon, started Jan. 2. She will be working as a front-line fund raiser, meeting one-on-one with donors to help them match their interests with funding opportunities at Fairmont State University. 

The Fairmont State University School of Nursing has received $100,000 from grants and private funders to support the purchase of an advanced pediatric patient simulator that will provide its students with enhanced learning opportunities and realistic real-world experiences.