A silent auction held April 1-7, raised funds for the Jean Nettles Scholarship Endowment Fund. The Professional and Administrative staff association sponsored the auction.

In January 2001, a second pledge of $5,000 was made by P.A.S.A. The auction was a fundraising event to complete that pledge. The pledge needs to be completed by December 31. The scholarship will be awarded to P.A.S.A employees attending college at UH-Clear Lake.

"What's amazing is during the first campaign [P.A.S.A] did a silent auction and they were amazed at the success of the auction and seeing what happened with it," said Weise. "When we realized we needed to finish the campaign this year, we sat around and came up with different fundraising ideas. Someone said, 'Well let's do this [auction] again' and so we said 'Okay, fine.' We put a little flyer out that we are going to be doing this and things just started coming in."

Donated items poured in from faculty, staff, and various departments. Weise says the generosity of all of the employees at the university has been overwhelmingly supportive. Several individuals donated items and several departments went in together to create baskets. The Doritos snack basket was donated by P.A.S.A. members with strictly students in mind.

"To reach our endowment was our goal," said Pamela Groves, environmental health and safety officer and P.A.S.A. committee member. "We had the faculty, professional staff, administrative staff and support staff who donated. From every part of the university, people were very generous with donating items. There wasn't a lot of footwork [involved]. It was very generous throughout the university community."

Some of the donated items included: Lunch for four with President Staples, student parking permit, sailing trip for four with At the Helm Tours, employee parking permit, day of sailing and dolphin watching with refreshments, saltwater fishing trip for three with Provost Hayes, Bruce Palmer meeting doodle, picnic basket with goodies, beach basket with cooler, computer supply basket, Apollo 13 book autographed by Jim Lovell, glass block fish bowl with live fish, handmade pottery pitcher, Raku pottery, John Gorman signed poem and book, handmade pottery, spa basket, handmade quilt, and half-price on a UH-Clear Lake ring.

"There was starting to be some competition over the sailboat ride, but the funniest thing is that the glass with the fish in it had more bids on it than anything else." Groves said. "It's the uniqueness of the glass block."

The bids closed April 7 at 4 p.m. Weise says they wanted to run the auction in conjunction with the chili cook-off in order to promote wholeness and unity at the university. She points out that P.A.S.A. knew there would be people moving in and out who would come over and take a look at the items that were up for auction. This was one of the main reasons for running it through the weekend.

Weise says that the committee for the silent auction fell in place without much effort.

"I'll tell you what is really cool, it was one of those things that no one wanted to chair." Weise said. "Nobody wanted to be the responsible person for having to do all the work, and just a group of individuals said 'I will help.' It was all P.A.S.A. members. Before you knew what was going on, we had this committee. It was just everyone coming together and doing it. There's proof you don't have to have an actual committee chair to make an event unfold."

The silent auction committee members were: Richard Adams, director of operations support; Sue Biard, compensation human resources information systems specialist; Judy Chapmon, senior business coordinator for the president's office; Sonja Fairbanks, senior business coordinator for school of education; Pam Groves, environmental health and safety officer; Beth Kent, human resources employee coordinator; Brenda Klimt, facilities management and construction horticulture supervisor; David Rachita, director of student life office; Jodi Rodriguez, contract administrations specialist; and Mary Ann Shallberg, executive associate for the president's office.

"It was a very good committee with a lot of hardworking people that worked out well. It was a group effort and it's been a lot of fun," Groves said. " This is for people who attend this university to go to school. It is something we all believe in for support for people that are trying to better themselves. I would like to thank everybody that donated and everybody that bid."

"I have enjoyed watching the excitement of individuals down there looking at everything and hearing the conversation." Weise said. "One of the things that really touches me right now is that it was fun to see everyone's interest in the auction. It kind of took away from all the other bad news that is going on right now. To get this little bit of distraction put a smile on everyone's face."

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