Alumna's generosity helps grad students in English department

By Krista Wright

Earning an advanced degree is never easy on the wallet. But thanks to the generosity of Florida State University alumna Melissa Berger and her husband, Daniel Berger, getting a graduate degree in English has just gotten a little easier.

Because of the newly established Melissa and Daniel Berger Graduate Fellowship, a fortunate graduate student will have some relief from the financial stresses of his or her coursework. Created for English department graduate students who excel, the fellowship will be awarded annually, beginning in Fall 2011.

“Dan and I are very happy to be fortunate enough to provide a graduate student with the freedom to concentrate more on their work, and have to worry less about financing their education,” says Berger, who graduated from Florida State in 1991 with a major in English on the literature track, with an emphasis in business.

FSU alumna Melissa Berger and her husband, Dan Berger, display a one-of-a-kind fused glass piece made for them by the Master Craftsman Program. The artwork shows words found on the entrance to Dodd Hall: "The half of knowledge is to know where to find knowledge."

Berger, originally from New Jersey, moved to Florida with her family when she was 5. After high school graduation, she and two of her best friends enrolled at Florida State. While at FSU, Berger worked at the Sweet Shop and enjoyed attending Seminole football games.

Berger chose to major in English because “I have always liked writing, but I was always terrible in math,” she says jokingly. “I could always write a good paper and I love to read, so I think that’s what led me down that path.”

Of her experiences in the English department, Berger says, “The classes and the department were just really top notch.” Although she says she did not have one favorite course, “I really liked every writing and literature class I took. I found them all to be engaging and interesting.”

Berger expressed her appreciation for the variety of classes offered within the literature track because she was able to explore genres that she would not normally have read on her own.

 “What I remember most about Florida State is that I really felt like I got to check out things outside of my comfort zone,” she says.

During her upbringing in Florida, Berger often visited her extended family in New Jersey, and she says that she always knew she wanted to live in New York City. After graduation from Florida State, she made the move and found a job at a law firm.

Currently, Melissa and Dan Berger live in New York City, where they are active in charities and fundraisers. Melissa has been on the board of directors for Sanctuary for Families, a resource for domestic violence victims, for six years.

She describes Sanctuary as “a cause very near and dear to my heart. It is just one of those things that you want to do something about. We always say at Sanctuary that we want to be out of business, but unfortunately that is just not the case.”

Dan Berger, a graduate of Columbia Law School, is a director with the Grant and Eisenhofer law firm and has more than 30 years of legal experience. He is a member of the Board of Visitors at Columbia Law School and a regular faculty member for Practicing Law Institute programs.

The Bergers are dedicated philanthropists and have been generously giving to Florida State for the past few years.

“We felt like Florida State deserved it,” Melissa Berger says. “They gave me an education—a great education—and if I’m in the position to give back to them, I am happy to do it. I just had a great experience at Florida State and felt like it was time to give back. When we were asked about doing an endowment or a fellowship, it just felt like it was the right thing to do.

“If you are going to pick something to support, there are so many fantastic organizations and wonderful causes. But if you look at the school where you had four or so years of great experiences, it’s worth it to give back.”

Melissa Berger (center) hosts FSU President Eric Barron and his wife, Molly, at an FSU event in New York City in the fall of 2011.

For the past three years, the Bergers have hosted an annual event at their apartment in New York for professors, alumni, and friends and supporters of Florida State. The events branched off from “FSU in NYC,” a program mainly for the dance and theater schools at FSU. Melissa says there are always FSU events in the city, and after corresponding with English department faculty, she offered to host a cultivation event for the College of Arts and Sciences since she had been an English major.

She says these events have been getting bigger every year, and she has enjoyed hosting them. “It’s been great that I have actually been able to meld my two worlds by having these events every year,” She adds.

Erin Belieu, an associate professor in the English department and director of the Creative Writing Program, attended one of the events at the Berger residence.

“Dan and Melissa are two of the nicest, most generous people you’d ever want to meet,” Belieu says. “When we were in their beautiful, art-filled apartment in Chelsea, they made all of us so welcome, and their sense of enthusiasm for literature and literacy scholarship is palpable and inspiring. It was a wonderful evening for which we were all grateful.”

Everyone who has met the Bergers has described them with enthusiasm.

“It was such a pleasure to meet Melissa and Dan, who are not only generous benefactors to our department, and thoughtful, smart people, but who are genuinely fun to be around,” says Anne Coldiron, a literature professor. “They are great conversationalists on a huge range of topics—history, the arts, parenting, science, politics, literature—perhaps especially literature.”

Even though Melissa Berger loves New York City, she has enjoyed introducing her immediate family to Tallahassee when they return for visits, but she says they do not get to Florida as much as they would like. FSU football games bring the Bergers to Tallahassee more than anything else, but Melissa adds there is always one other thing they have to do when in town: “I have to go to Publix! We don’t have Publix up North, so we always take a stop at Publix at some point,” she says, laughing.

Ralph Berry, chair of the English department, says that the Bergers are playing a crucial role in the graduate program’s future. “Melissa and Dan are the sort of forward-thinking individuals on whose support talented students everywhere depend. They recognize the importance of the humanities for an educated and responsible citizenry, and they know that without material resources, humanistic education can’t survive. It would be difficult to overstate what their loyalty has meant for the department. They’re just great people.”

The Melissa and Daniel Berger Fellowship gives one graduate student per year relief from the financial burden of pursuing an advanced degree, and the gift will allow the recipient to teach fewer classes. When the amount of study time lost to grading papers, student conferences, and class preparation is considered, teaching fewer classes means more time for studying, which results in earlier graduation, enhanced opportunities, and less debt.

The fellowship will be awarded annually to a new or advanced graduate student who excels in the English department’s creative writing, rhetoric and composition, or literature concentrations. The faculty of the specific program will determine recipients of the award based on the student’s GRE scores, a writing sample, and grade point average. The Fall 2011 fellowship was slated to go to a graduate student in the creative writing track.

“This new fellowship is extraordinarily generous—and gracious,” says Professor Kathleen Yancey, who directs the Rhetoric and Composition Program and has spent time with the Bergers. “To our graduate students, it will mean the chance to focus on their research and writing; and to FSU’s English department, it will mean that we have a living connection between our past students and our current ones. It’s a living legacy in every sense of the word ‘living.’”

Melissa and Daniel Berger are giving a ray of hope to graduate students whose future is clouded by debt.

“It has been very rewarding to me to feel like I have come full circle in my life to be able to be a part of what is going on at Florida State again after 20-something years,” Melissa Berger says. “I enjoy it and I hope that other people will be inspired by somebody or something in their life to do the same thing and give back, and that’s what it’s really all about.”

This article first appeared in the English department’s alumni news magazine, Scroll, Scribe & Screen. Its author, Krista Wright, is an undergraduate majoring in English. Katie Brown, who graduated in Spring 2011 with a bachelor’s degree in English, contributed to this article.