Text on screen reads: “The Brandeis National Committee: A Shared History, A Bright Future”
Fade from black to a rising aerial shot of the Brandeis library courtyard.
Merle Carrus sits in a room with walls filled with books from floor to ceiling. She says, “The Brandeis National Committee started 75 years ago. We're celebrating our 75th celebration also with the university. We were started as a small group of philanthropic women in the Boston area that were asked to fill the library with books when Brandeis opened. And we did that, we filled the library with a million books.”
Black and white photos of early members of the BNC, and the first Brandeis library.
Rebecca Brandon is seated in front of a window with a beautiful view of the trees outside. She says, “When Brandeis University was founded, the library was out of a stable, like a horse stable, and was only about a thousand books and most of them were Veterinary based. We got accreditation as a university in, like, less than 25 years, and a huge part of that was the work the BNC did to build up the Brandeis libraries as a collection.”
Tracking view of rows of bookshelves in the library.
Stephen Van Hooser is seated in a lab room in front of a large microscope array. He says, “When I was a student, I would go to the library and pull out journals and papers, and look at the front cover. Many of them say they were purchased with funds from the BNC.”
Tracking view of rows of bookshelves in the library.
Leslie Pearlstein is seated on a couch in front of a window. She says, “And we didn't just buy books; we had other programs that we supported within the library itself. We had a library work scholar program, where we provided scholarships for students who worked in the library, we had a technology fund. Over the years, it moved away a little bit from supporting just the library, and we started supporting medical research. We had a campaign a few years ago which was involved with the Neuroscience Department.”
Timelapse shot of students on campus walking past the library.
Views from various locations within the library.
Images of microscope slides and other research imagery.
Close-up views of the microscope.
Stephen Van Hooser says, “I worked very closely with the BNC to raise money for the technology that is sitting behind me now: the BNC resonance scanning two-Photon microscope.”
Gina Turrigiano sits in her office in front of a window, surrounded by green plants. She says, “You know, really the questions that you can ask as a neuroscientist are limited to a large extent by the technologies you have available. So you just can't ask the sorts of questions that we're able to ask now, without the instruments that let you do these sorts of experiments.”
Stephen Van Hooser gestures toward various parts of the microscope.
Black and white images of structures in the brain, produced by the microscope.
Gina Turrigiano says, “This microscope allows you to visualize these teeny tiny little structures deep in the brain. The work that we're doing now is really setting the stage for, I think, where the research in the lab is going to go. The impact that this microscope is having at the university is going to be cumulative; it's really going to affect the way things go for a long time.”
Sweeping aerial view of Brandeis campus.
Merle Carrus says, “We are people that have no other connection usually to the university, except because we think this is an important mission.”
Black and white image of people cheering in front of the Brandeis library, with a banner that says, “Millionth Book Celebration”.
Black and white image of old buildings on campus.
Spinning view of the Louis Brandeis statue on campus.
Leslie Pearlstein says, “The idea that it was a new University sponsored by the American Jewish Community took hold in the Jewish populations across the country. They were all ambassadors for the university.”
Rebecca Brandon says, “The BNC has a lot to offer in the forms of what you can do to help your local community, and also fulfill your own interests or continued education.”
Merle Carrus says, “It's a chance to make new friends or to be together with peers, and it's also a great way to do something in leadership. Brandeis National Committee is important to the University's future because it's a great way for us to fund education, the future of students and their education to the sciences. It's just an all-around way to support a university and know exactly where your dollars are going when you make a donation, and I think that's important.”
Views of statues outside the library as students walk past on a beautiful day.
View of a plaque on a bookshelf in the library, which reads “Brandeis University National Women’s Committee library collection, The gift of Cookie and Malcom Kates, in honor of their 50th wedding anniversary, Boston Chapter 1996”
Rebecca Brandon says, “The work is never completed; Brandeis as a community, but also Brandeis as an institution is always growing and evolving, so there's always new things for the BNC to involve itself with to help the institution.”
Black and white photo of Abram Sachar, the founder of Brandeis University.
Belle Jurkowitz is seated on a couch in her living room. She says, “The common cause and Mission was the idea of Brandeis. To think that the American Jewish Community came together immediately after World War II, was like taking a leap off a mountain and hoping you would survive. And they took the leap.”
Text on screen reads “Learn more about the Brandeis National Committee: brandeis.edu/BNC”