“The moment I met her, I knew I wanted to spend a lot more time with this woman. And luckily, she did too.”

David VandeLinde (E 1964, 1965, 1968) remembers vividly the moment he met his wife, Marjorie “Margie” (Park) VandeLinde (S 1964). It was at a Carnegie Tech freshmen party in 1960. He was an electrical engineering major, and she was studying mathematics. Margie, who was a Delta Delta Delta sorority member and a CMU cheerleader, was a “bubbly, charming person whom I was immediately attracted to,” says David, who was a member of Sigma Nu fraternity.

“Carnegie Tech was a really wonderful place to grow up,” David says. “Campus life was relaxed and it was an intellectually stimulating place. It was a lot of fun.”

Margie and David made the fun official in August 1964, when they married following graduation.

While David earned his doctorate in electrical engineering, Margie worked at U.S. Steel, using early computers to model the efficiency of blast furnaces. When David accepted a professorship at Johns Hopkins University in 1967, Margie became a math teacher at a middle school. Once she had their first child, she devoted herself to their family, raising their sons, Scott and Eric, and caring for their daughter, Karen, who passed away as a child from a degenerative disease. David had a successful career at Johns Hopkins, eventually becoming the first dean of the Whiting School of Engineering — where he hired an assistant dean named Jared Cohon, who later became president of CMU. His time at Johns Hopkins led to a new opportunity as vice chancellor (president) at the University of Bath in England. The family began their “new adventure” abroad in 1992.

In 2001, after leading Bath to a top 10 ranking, David moved on to lead the University of Warwick. At both universities, Margie enthusiastically applied her organizational skills and bright personality to her hostess responsibilities, making friends with everyone from cabinet ministers to university staff.

In 2006, David retired and the VandeLindes moved home a year later as Margie’s battle with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease progressed. Their retirement included walks at their winter home in Myrtle Beach, watching wildlife at their summer home in West Virginia and spending time with their grandchildren until Margie passed away in May 2017.

David and Margie had always planned to make a substantial gift to CMU in honor of the foundation the university helped build for their lives together. They previously helped to establish the VandeLinde-Cohon Scholarship in the College of Engineering following President Cohon’s service. This year, in Margie’s honor, David endowed the Margie VandeLinde Scholarship, which will support undergraduates, with a preference for female students, in the Department of Mathematics.

The Margie VandeLinde Scholarship was funded through both a qualified charitable distribution from David’s IRA and a donor-advised fund, an option that allows a donor to make a contribution, receive an immediate tax benefit and then recommend grants from the fund over time.

“I am a big fan of the donor-advised fund. I think it’s a great way to give money,” David says. “It allows you to separate the act of giving from the act of specifying the gift.”

For David, the question of honoring Margie with a gift to CMU in the department where she spent four happy, stimulating years had a simple answer.

“Giving back to CMU is just something we thought was the right thing to do,” David says. “Margie was a natural at math. She loved the rigor and challenge of it.”