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By David Poulson
One of the delights of Michigan State University’s Fate of the Earth conference is the dinner for organizers and speakers the night before.
I always angled to get a seat next to Barbara Sawyer-Koch, a former MSU trustee, who with her late husband Donald Koch, an MSU philosophy professor, endowed this annual conference on sustainability.
It was their support that allowed MSU’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism to help bring top-flight environmental journalists to speak at the event and later meet with our students.
Barb, who died March 6, was an excellent dinner companion. Her interests were far ranging – music, travel, sustainability, international students and a deep love for MSU. They intersected – she spoke knowledgeably about the impact of climate change that she noticed in her travels. And while we did not know each other well, she thoughtfully remembered to accommodate my hearing deficit during those noisy dinners.
MSU remembers alumna and former trustee Barbara Sawyer-Koch
The Michigan State University community is remembering alumna, trustee emerita and philanthropist Barbara Sawyer-Koch, 72, who died March 6, 2021.
Born in Menominee, Michigan, Sawyer-Koch was retired from the Michigan Department of Treasury. She earned her master’s degree in public administration in 1990 from the College of Social Science and served on the MSU Board of Trustees from Jan. 1, 1979, through 1994. Her husband, Donald Koch, a professor emeritus in the Department of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Letters, preceded her in death in 2018.
The pair were members of the Wharton and Landon giving societies, supporting MSU over many years and in many ways.