Opening Doors for Rural Michigan Scholars

Donna Jacobs (A.B. ’63) starts by saying that she doesn’t have much of a remarkable story. But when she shares more about her life: growing up on a farm in southwest Michigan, obtaining a world-class education, traveling the world, it’s clear she has lived a storied life. Her LSA scholarship, the Horizon Scholarship Fund, is named after the boat she and her late husband lived on for nearly two decades.For Jacobs, the inspiration behind creating a scholarship wasn’t just about giving back; it was about giving others the chance to receive an education. The chance she, herself, was given many years ago.

Before she embarked on her sophomore year at Michigan, Jacobs learned some unsettling news that could have derailed her future. Her father told her that the corn crops on her family’s farm had frozen unexpectedly, and their family’s main source of income vanished. While she knew this happened to farms rarely, it had already happened the previous year and her family had barely scraped by. In addition to the loan her parents would need to sustain the farm, she knew they would also take out another loan for her room and board.

Her father, in particular, had taken a special interest in her education. “It’s interesting that my father was the biggest supporter of my education. Because of the need to support his family, he only completed the sixth grade. But he wanted me to be able to do whatever I wanted.”

Jacobs was born and raised on a 200-acre farm in rural Michigan. The nearest town was a few miles away. She attended a one-room schoolhouse, one student in a class of six, she said.

“Think about being deeply in the country, with the same handful of students every year.” Her teacher encouraged her to consider higher education, and her parents eventually paid tuition to send her to a larger high school nearby.

When she enrolled at U-M, she was initially a math major but found she excelled at German language courses. Eventually, she changed her major to Germanic languages and literatures, choosing a minor in political science. What she loved about Michigan was that there was room for all of her interests: mathematics, German language and literature, music, and politics.

“I didn’t feel like I had to limit myself,” she said. “I didn’t have to drop music to study German—I could have both.” Jacobs credits the interdisciplinary education she received at Michigan with helping her stay interested in a variety of passions. “I wasn’t in a degree with a clear job path like nursing or education,” she said. “And I don’t regret that. I think it helped make me who I am.”

She reflects on the most transformative class she took: a music theory and composition class that met in Burton Memorial Tower. “Being on campus, surrounded by music and by friends who challenged me, I learned, in a sense, how to grow as a person and take responsibility. I grew in ways I never would have if I had stayed home.”

After she learned her parents would have to borrow money to support her sophomore year, she went to what was then called the Office of Scholarships and Grants to see if any aid was available.

The office told Jacobs that an alumna from a town near where she grew up had designated a scholarship for a student in need from Allegan County. “What were the odds, I thought, of a woman from my township creating a scholarship for a student like me?”

The experience stuck with her as she finished her education and began her career, which would take her across the U.S. and even briefly to Germany. Although she may have started out in a one-room schoolhouse, Jacobs’s studies and the relationships she formed at the university helped expand her worldview—and the opportunities for a limitless future.

After many years working in publishing and corporate offices, Jacobs’s life changed. Because of an inspiring vacation in the Carribean, she and her late husband decided to learn how to sail. They joined the U-M sailing club and took lessons on a racing dinghy. Eventually, Donna and John bought their own sailboat: a 39-foot John Alden wooden ketch named Horizon.

“We learned the basics of it and the boat taught us everything else we needed to know,” Jacobs recalls. They would live on the Horizon for 17 years.

Her voice fills with a quiet sense of wonder as she reflects on that time in her life. “It was the loveliest home I ever had,” she said. “Every day was an adventure.”

That sense of expansiveness, of opportunity, and navigating a way forward is reflected in the Horizon Scholarship Fund. 

“I just want to give people an equal chance,” she says. “The chance to have less stress from financial worries and get an education. And what they do with that education, who knows? Some people who attend the university may actually help to change the world.”

Access to life-changing education in the liberal arts and sciences can do more than reshape one first-generation student’s future. It can ripple outward across generations, turning opportunity into a legacy of possibility for everyone who comes after.