When his mother — herself a donor to the department, including to the museum’s Bruner Family Library — died, Bruner said he looked for continued ways to support the program that meant so much to his parents.
In addition to giving to the University’s biomedical engineering program — including creating the Dennis and Dorothy Bruner Biomedical Engineering Scholarship, he recently established the Bruner Family Scholarship in Entomology. The $50,000 endowment will be used to fund scholarships for students studying entomology, with preference to those who have worked at the C.P. Gillette Museum of Arthropod Diversity.
The timing is perfect as the department recently added Agricultural Biology, which has a concentration in Entomology, as an undergraduate major, said Amy Charkowski, professor and department head in the College of Agricultural Sciences.
“There are so many students at CSU interested in entomology and there have been for quite a while,” Charkowski said. The Gillette Entomology Club, established in 1912, is the oldest club at CSU, and with nearly 5 million specimens, the C.P. Gillette Museum of Arthropod Diversity features one of the largest insect collections in the world.
“It’s an important collection and one our students can learn a lot from,” Charkowski said. “It gives them a chance to truly understand the specimens, and we’ve even had students describe new species while working there. So, we’re thrilled that Mr. Bruner wants to continue his family lineage by supporting our efforts.”
For Bruner, the gift felt like the next natural progression in the family’s history with the department and CSU.
“I wanted to help the department and the museum continue C.P. Gillette’s work and further his name, as well as the Bruner family name,” he said.
Bruner also donated Gillette’s pocket watch and a small brass cicada to the department. Both items are currently on display at the museum’s entryway.
“That little cicada is actually a clicker,” Bruner said. “(Gillette) used that while he would lecture to indicate when he wanted a slide to be changed.”
Seeing the items on display — along with photos of his great grandfather — was a heartening experience, he said.
“The museum is such a cool thing, and it gave my mother a lot of pleasure to be part of that,” Bruner said. “And now it gives me pleasure to be part of it as well.”
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