Liberal Arts alumna creates memorial fund in Africana Research Center

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — With a $50,000 commitment — half through an endowment and half in immediate-use funds — 1985 Penn State Spanish alumna Cheryl Reasoner Wethers has created the C. Reasoner Memorial Fund in the Africana Research Center (ARC) in the Penn State College of the Liberal Arts. The fund honors the memories of Wethers’ father and brother, both of whom were named Chester. It will support mission-focused research by faculty, post-doctoral fellows and students in the ARC.

Originally from New Jersey, Wethers cited many reasons for deciding to attend Penn State. An outstanding high school athlete, she was recruited by other universities to play field hockey and softball but didn’t want to be restricted by the demands of being a college athlete, she said. Academic programs that satisfied her intellectual curiosity were most important to her.

“I just wanted to be a student,” she said. “My dad said, ‘Honey, you want to go to a school that’s going to represent what the world looks like.’ Penn State was that place. It gave me the opportunity to study Spanish, to go abroad [for a semester in Salamanca, Spain] and to expand my world.”

Though she majored in Spanish, Wethers did not want a career as “a teacher or a translator — the usual paths for Spanish majors,” she said. Instead, because she loved cars, she aspired to work for General Motors (GM) and elected to earn a bachelor of science degree in Spanish — a program that included both business and language courses. Wethers achieved her goal following a conversation with a GM representative at a Penn State career fair. She worked for GM for four years before landing a job as a regional account manager for Cigna Health Benefits. Wethers later opted to stay home with her children and work as an independent management consultant.

Though a lifetime member of the Penn State Alumni Association, Wethers had only returned to campus once since graduation. A special invitation in 2020 from Clarence Lang, the Susan Welch Dean of the College of the Liberal Arts, however, enticed her to reengage with her alma mater, she said.

“Dean Lang asked me to join the college’s diversity, equity and inclusion task force,” Wethers said. “I accepted the invitation because, though I had a great experience at Penn State, I had friends who did not. Only about 2% of Penn State students were African American when I attended, and I thought it was important for the task force to hear all perspectives and to find ways to retain and not just recruit Black students.”

While serving on the task force, Wethers said, she learned about the history of the Africana Research Center, which, as she read on the center's website, “emerged from Black Caucus-led student protests concerning the racial climate at the University Park campus in the spring of 2001.”

“When I saw the history of racism on campus and how the ARC came about, it made me take a closer look,” Wethers said. “I liked what those students stood for, and I wanted to support it.” She had previously made contributions to Penn State’s Center for Black Digital Research as well as to the Student Care and Advocacy Emergency Fund and the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Fund. The C. Reasoner Memorial Fund is her first endowed gift.

“We are very grateful that Cheryl chose to direct her philanthropy to the Africana Research Center,” Lang said. “The ARC is a vital hub of interdisciplinary scholarship that exists to advance research and knowledge about the diverse histories, lives and cultures of African diasporic peoples. The C. Reasoner Memorial fund will enable the center’s director to expand this important work.”

Wethers said she wants her commitment to celebrate the past as well as inspire the future.

“I believe in education,” she said. “I believe in opportunity. I believe in supporting underrepresented students and in the importance of research, but that’s not why I decided to support the ARC. I created this fund to honor the students from two decades ago who were committed to trying to make a better place at Penn State and have their voices heard.”

Gifts like the C. Reasoner Memorial Fund in the Africana Research Center advance the University’s historic land-grant mission to serve and lead. Through philanthropy, alumni and friends are helping students to join the Penn State family and prepare for lifelong success; driving research, outreach and economic development that grow our shared strength and readiness for the future; and increasing the University’s impact for families, patients, and communities across the commonwealth and around the world. Learn more by visiting raise.psu.edu.