Investing in possibility

As a professor and former chair of the Department of Biology at San Francisco State University (SFSU) for 37 years, it might be easy to mistake the Bay Area as the starting point in Goldman’s career. In fact, it started long before that, on another coast entirely—across the country as a student at the University of Rochester.

“Before I came to Rochester, I didn’t really know what a professor was. I certainly didn’t know that’s what I’d end up doing with my life,” Goldman admits.

“I thought maybe I’d be a biologist or a biochemist without really knowing what that meant,” he adds. “In some ways, my time at Rochester taught me more about the unknown than the known.”

For Goldman, the unknown included the multitude of opportunities he’d encounter as he explored his passion for biology, guided in part by renowned scientists and University of Rochester faculty members like Ernst Wolfgang Caspari, Uzi Nur, Lewis White Beck, and countless others. Supported by the University of Rochester’s flexible academic program and early exposure to hands-on laboratory research, his four years at Rochester became a formative experience—one that shaped the curious student who would later earn a doctorate in evolutionary biology.

Now, as Goldman prepares to celebrate his milestone 50th class reunion, he’s intent on preserving the transformational education that shaped his professional career—and his life—for a new generation of innovators and problem-solvers.

“When I was a student, there was just biology, but now, there must be half a dozen specialized degree programs,” he says. “I see tremendous growth in the opportunities available to today’s students.”

That growth is precisely what Goldman and his wife, Sally Pasion, a fellow professor at SFSU, hope to sustain through a provision in their wills to create the Michael A. Goldman and Sally G. Pasion Faculty Research Endowment Fund. In addition to directly supporting faculty conducting leading research, their gift will provide flexible funding to the Department of Biology for start-up projects, equipment, and emerging needs—critial areas of need they’ve witnessed firsthand as professors.

My experience as a faculty member and department chair only reinforced the value of philanthropy,” Goldman says. “Years from now, the Department will understand more than we ever could where these funds are needed most, and we wanted our gift to provide that flexibility.

For Sally, whose own relationship to the University has been more as a “bystander,” instead of as an alumna herself, she carries her own special tie to the University of Rochester in the form of one of its most famous graduates.

“One of my scientific heroes, Dr. Arthur Kornberg ‘41M (MD), ‘62 (HNR)*, came out of Rochester,” Sally says, referencing the Nobel Prize winning biochemist. “The fact that this place was part of his path—just as it was Michael’s—always impressed me.”

In addition to their contributions to the Department of Biology, Goldman and Pasion are also generous supporters of the Barbara J. Burger iZone at the River Campus Libraries, another opportunity to support the curiosity and collaboration that will fuel academic excellence for all students, according to Goldman.

“Learning spaces like iZone are fun and really important,” he says. “I’d like to see these spaces remain modern and keep up with the times, and just as important, stay open as many hours as possible.”

Today, Goldman admits it hardly feels like five decades since he left Rochester with the degree that would shape the rest of his life, but it’s the next five decades—and the ones after that—he remains hopeful for.

“Research universities are an important part of our future,” Goldman says. “I, for one, am depending on them–to lengthen our lives and to maintain the integrity of our future.”

Goldman and Pasion are also members of the Wilson Society, which honors and celebrates philanthropic individuals who have established life-income plans or named the University as a beneficiary of their estate.