Mental health challenges can impact anyone at any time. For UT students, college is a significant season of growth and change. Combine that with rigorous academic expectations in emerging fields, launching careers, and navigating finances, and what you’ve got is a crucial need to keep students healthy. Having access to adequate mental health support when it is needed is essential to help students navigate challenges when they occur.
As students at UT, many individuals face competing priorities that can lead to stress.
And two family-supported endowments are doing just that through both the Student Counseling Center and the Center for Care and Resilience.
An Endowment for Hope
For Ivie (’91) and Stephanie (’93) Burns, creating a way to support students in crisis was their response to both their impactful experiences as students at UT and Ivie’s encounters with mental health struggles. In his early thirties, Ivie entered a season of challenge that he could later name with a diagnosis of anxiety and depression. Ivie sought counseling and medication, and around six months into recovery realized just how significant his depression had been.
“After that season, I went ‘wow, I really dodged a bullet,’” says Ivie. “It made me realize that anyone could be dealing with such vulnerability and we just don’t know it.” For Ivie, he believes the risk of anxiety and depression recurring will always be there, but he has learned how to live a full, abundant life, evolving to have strong boundaries and be ready to reach out for professional counseling when it is needed.
For both Ivie and Stephanie, their Christian faith has been a grounding force throughout their 31-year marriage. They wanted to help UT students who might be experiencing what Ivie battled, but they also wanted to help connect students to resources that could speak to both their mental and spiritual well-being.
Earlier this year, they established the Ivie P. and Stephanie S. Burns Christian Hope Endowment as a pathway for students who desire Christian faith-based counseling through a referral process to local health care providers in Knoxville.
“The students who are at UT are the world’s future,” says Ivie. “And there are a lot of hurting people in the world who on the surface look very blessed—they have good jobs, access to education, maybe a strong marriage. But they’re struggling with their mental health nonetheless. This is for those UT students who, on the outside, might look like they have it all together but are hurting. If we can help them find a healthy mindset while they’re at UT, they’ll be mentally prepared and emotionally ready to make an even more positive difference in the world after they graduate.”
“If we can help them find a healthy mindset while they’re at UT, they’ll be mentally prepared and emotionally ready to make an even more positive difference in the world after they graduate.”
Ivie Burns, ’91
Investing in Success
Similarly, when their own family tree was impacted by mental health challenges, Mark and Ashley Danzi wanted to give to help students at UT access the support they needed when they needed it most. Through an endowment supporting the Center for Care and Resilience, the Danzi Family Student Success Endowment creates ongoing training and educational programming for staff and students, marketing materials to help educate students on accessing support, and emergency basic needs funding when students face housing or transportation insecurity.
“One of our children is now a UT alumnus, and the other just completed their first year on campus, so we are big fans of UT and the experiences our kids have had there,” says Mark. “We were always so impressed by UT’s warm, welcoming, and supportive culture, which had a huge, positive impact on our son’s successful transition to college.”
“We were always so impressed by UT’s warm, welcoming and supportive culture, which had a huge, positive impact on our son’s successful transition to college.”
Ashley Danzi
For the Danzi family, it was clear from the outset that UT was incredibly focused on not just matriculating new students but engaging with them, helping them join the community, and finding ways to maximize their chances of success and ultimately graduation. Giving back to UT was an important priority for them, and it was only natural that success and support of students was a focus of that gift.
“At the same time, having experienced someone close to us navigate mental health challenges, directing our pledge to support student success and student mental health felt like a great way to make a positive impact while honoring UT’s incredible culture,” adds Ashley.
After an initial pledge a few years ago, the Danzi family endowment will be fully funded and operational in fall 2026, supporting the ongoing efforts of the Center for Care and Resilience in helping students find success amid challenges.
“From the outset we felt like part of the extended UT community,” says Ashley, “And we had the rewarding experience of becoming friends with members of UT’s administration—and those friendships have deepened over the years.”
In fact, the Danzis are also part of the relaunched Tennessee Family Board, a group of UT parents and family members that serve as advocates through their engagement, service, and philanthropic investment in areas that are meaningful to them and impactful to the university community.
“Making our pledge has reinforced our sense of being part of the UT community,” says Mark. “It’s been truly rewarding to learn about the impact it has started having.”
These two families are lighting the way for others, embodying the courage and compassion required to help a campus community thrive in the face of mental health challenges. It takes a volunteer, like Ivie, Stephanie, Ashley, and Mark, to impact the student experience at UT and create a pathway for health through their giving.