“Even after completing my master’s in education and PhD, I still consider Evergreen 
to be my seminal educational experience. Tom Rainey was a central part of that.”

  —Elizabeth Dinkins, ‘94, donor to the Thomas Rainey History and Literature Scholarship

At 78, Tom Rainey calls himself a “failed retiree.” He’s taught at Evergreen since 1972 and has mapped out program ideas until 2017.

A proud U.S. Navy veteran and self-described “lifelong slave to Clio, the muse of history,” Rainey developed Evergreen’s Russian studies program and has been an ardent supporter of interdisciplinary, team-taught programs. “In my 40-plus years at Evergreen, I have rarely taught alone,” he said. “From my colleagues, I have learned the latest in the sciences, literature, philosophy, ecology, and the expressive arts. I am a better historian for the interdisciplinary teaching that I have done.”

For many alumni, Tom Rainey is synonymous with their Evergreen education. In a letter coauthored by John Bellamy Foster ’75, a sociology professor at the University of Oregon, and Robert McChesney ’76, a communication professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Rainey was called “the most important person in our intellectual development.”

They remember his honesty, integrity, and open-mindedness, as well as his “deep, confident, down-to-earth wisdom, boisterous laugh, and wry sense of humor.” Both men wrote that he left them “grounded in a way that was unique.”

When The Evergreen State College Foundation approached Rainey’s wife of 30 years, double Evergreen graduate Nina Carter (BA ’82, MPA ’85) with the scholarship idea, she was thrilled. “Tom and I met at Evergreen,” said Carter, the director of Washington’s state Environmental and Land Use Hearings Office.

She worked with the foundation to make the scholarship available to financially needy, first-generation students who have a passion for history and literature but are at risk of dropping out. With more than 65 donors having contributed thus far, the scholarship met the criteria for gifts to be matched by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.   

Rainey has high hopes for recipients. “Evergreen students plunge right in where other students might hold back and wait for instruction.”

He is “greatly honored,” he said, by the new scholarship in his name. “If I have any chance at immortality, it is in the minds of my students.”