Alumna honors parents with endowed scholarship & planned gift

This year, Rose (Purpero) Spang ’62 will celebrate the 63rd anniversary of graduating from Alverno College. During the holidays, she gets together with 15 friends from the Class of 1962. “My best friends are my Alverno friends that I made while I was in college,” she says.

Spang first learned about Alverno from her high school English teacher, visited the college with her mother and sister, and then won a scholarship to attend.

“The college was large enough to have nice activities for students, and small enough to make good friends,” Spang says. “I loved the size of Alverno and mostly I loved the School Sisters of St. Francis. The sisters were so nice, caring and attentive.”

When she was a student, Sister Joel Read served as Spang’s mentor. After graduating from Alverno, she married Joseph Spang (a civil engineer and Marquette alum), became a mother, earned a graduate degree and worked as a financial representative at Northwestern Mutual for more than three decades. She also become involved in the Alverno Alumnae Association Board and served on the Alum Committee for Alverno’s Promise & Power campaign, as well as received the Alverno Outstanding Alumnae Award, Spirit of Alverno Award, and Ambassador of the Year Award.

Throughout her career and in her work in the community, Spang carried the values her mother instilled in her, especially a phrase her mother often repeated in Italian that said, “You always must do the right thing.”

In 1986, Spang and her husband Joseph established an endowed scholarship – the Charles and Rosalie Purpero Memorial Endowed Scholarship – to honor her parents and support the college she loves. She also was instrumental in encouraging the Class of 1962 to endow a scholarship for their 50th reunion. In addition, Spang has committed a planned gift to Alverno in honor of her parents – and for many years showed other alums how to make a planned gift through their insurance policies.

“I support Alverno because it’s important to have a college like Alverno in our community,” Spang says. “There are many young women who want to come to Alverno, and some just need a little assistance. To maintain the quality of education that Alverno provides, alums, people in the community and businesses need to come together to support and sustain it.”

For more information on supporting Alverno, visit alverno.edu/give.