SJSU professor Howard Turetsky lost his battle with stomach cancer on December 4, 2012, but thanks to the dedicated efforts of some current and former students, his impact on education will continue.
Marketing honors students Diana Dao, Caroline Forbes and Nikki Sharma are teaming up with SunnyKarma, an online fundraising platform, to raise money for a scholarship established in Turetsky’s honor.
An on-campus kickoff fundraiser will take place on Wednesday, May 8 from 3:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. on the Seventh Street lawn across from the Event Center.
According to the accounting department, Turetsky taught accounting and finance at SJSU from Fall of 2000 to Fall of 2012.
He was heavily involved in Beta Alpha Psi, a scholastic organization for finance information professionals, and after the 10th Street parking garage shootings at SJSU in 2010, he was also active in creating scholarships in honor of the two victims who were both accounting students.
According to Dao, the scholarship in Turetsky’s name was originally established by his partner, Cecily Fung and SJSU’s accounting department.
Six days after his passing, Fung wrote on a Facebook page set up for the scholarship that more than $1,000 in donations had already come in.
Elina Elek, a founder and CEO of SunnyKarma and a 2006 graduate of SJSU’s accounting program, said she wants to give back to her alma mater and working with marketing students on the scholarship fundraiser was a natural choice.
“To me personally, he was not just the professor of my cost accounting class, but also a mentor,” she stated in an email.
According to Dao, the event began as a marketing project for the Gary J. Sbona Honors Program and was focused on raising awareness on campus about SunnyKarma itself, but quickly grew.
“Elina said ‘I remember him (Turetsky) as a professor, I’d like to do something bigger,’” Dao said.
Elek’s company, SunnyKarma, allows users to create and bid on auctions online and win various experiences or meetings, while 100 percent of the funds go to worthy charity causes.
According to the marketing group, their on-campus event will target students as well as alumni.
At the event, students will be encouraged to sign up for SunnyKarma and choose the already set-up “Turetsky Memorial Scholarship” as the beneficiary for any of their auctions.
In addition to food and games, the event will feature some noteworthy raffles.
“We’ll be raffling off an item each hour,” Dao said.
These will include Spartan Shops gift certificates and gift cards to places including Starbucks and O’Flaherty’s, all while leading up to the grand prize – a private jet ride to dinner in Half Moon Bay and an aerial tour of the Bay Area.
But students don’t have to wait until the day of the event to win something.
According to Dao, the group is organizing a campus-wide scavenger hunt that is taking place now and will continue every day leading up to the May 8 fundraiser.
“We were inspired by a person who hid an AMC gift card in the library and posted about it on the SJSU Confessions Facebook page,” Dao said.
Gift cards will be hidden around campus between the hours of 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. for students to find via clues posted on the SunnyKarma Facebook page and “turetskyfundraiser” Instagram account.
All money raised will go directly to the scholarship, which will be given to a deserving student on an annual basis.
According to Dao, because of Turetsky’s involvement in Beta Alpha Psi, the scholarship will be awarded to a Beta Alpha Psi student at a banquet on May 22.
The honors group encourages any student who has been positively affected by Turetsky’s guidance and instruction to come to the fundraiser or log on to SunnyKarma and help honor his legacy.
“He genuinely cared about his students and his class was always fun and invigorating,” Elek stated. “(This) whole idea is very close to my heart … I wanted to honor the memory of my professor.”