Future Thinking Now Encouraged to Teach

Eugenia Crain's career as an educator provided her with opportunities to meet interesting people who encouraged her to explore new challenges. Now retired, the professor emerita of accounting has made those same opportunities available to new generations of University of Central Missouri students by establishing a charitable gift annuity that eventually will provide a $100,000 gift through the UCM Foundation for scholarships.

A native of Sturgeon, Mo., Eugenia graduated from Northeast Missouri State Teachers College in 1942. After working for the state family services agency, she began teaching high school business classes in 1946 in New Franklin, Mo. She soon moved across the river to Boonville, where she and her first husband, the late Aven Roberts, taught at Kemper Military Academy.

After Aven's death in 1969, Eugenia taught briefly at Northeast Missouri State before accepting an opportunity to come to UCM as an accountant in the financial affairs office. She had remarried, and she and her husband, Stanley Crain, took advantage of the opportunity to move to Warrensburg in 1972.

While serving as an accountant in financial affairs, she taught a class in accounting. When she was encouraged to teach more courses, it turned into a new career preparing students for the business world.

After Stanley's death in 2000, she retired in 2001, but not before making the decision to establish the Stanley and Eugenia R. Crain Scholarship for undergraduate students in accounting through the UCM Foundation.

“My years at UCM were filled with wonderful friendships on campus and in Warrensburg,” she says. “I wanted to enable future students to share the same benefits I received at UCM. Those benefits included the counsel of fellow teachers and administrators who worked hard to provide the leadership and service that provided the quality education enjoyed by UCM students.”

“Education is important,” she says. “It's important to support the schools that educate the American public. The success of our democracy depends on an educated public.”

Learn How You Can Help
For more information please contact the Office of Planned Giving at 660-543-8000 or toll-free at 866-752-7257 or [email protected].