Above: Katherine and Gaylen Eslinger
Katherine (B.A., ’84) and Gaylen Eslinger have established a scholarship for SF State’s Metro College Success Program students to honor the struggles and successes of Katherine’s family
By Gail Mallimson
September 2024
While Katherine Eslinger was raised to value education, getting one did not always come easy for her or her family. Her parents, George and Helen Kallianis, were immigrants from Greece. George worked long hours as an electrician, and both Katherine’s parents dreamt of their four daughters attending college one day. However, when Katherine was in high school, tragedy struck: Her father died of lung cancer, leaving the grieving family without a primary income.
Katherine and her sisters worked part-time jobs while they were in high school to help support the family. After graduation, Katherine attended San Francisco State, taking the bus to classes from the family’s home in the Richmond District. She worked part-time, took night classes, and tried to make ends meet. Then she met her future husband, Gaylen, who lived in San Mateo. “Gaylen would pick me up from class at night,” says Katherine. “He would take me home and then drive back to San Mateo to his home.”
The Eslingers at their wedding
After a short dating period, Gaylen and Katherine married and started a family. As a young mother, Katherine was stretched for time but maintained her pursuit of a degree in Consumer and Family Studies at SF State. Gaylen, fully supportive of his wife’s desire to graduate from SF State, partnered with her to make it happen. For many years, the two parented in shifts, with Gaylen shifting his work schedule to accommodate Katherine’s classes. After 17 years, their work paid off and Katherine received her B.A. in 1984.
After college, Katherine worked as an executive assistant for the Vice Provost at Stanford University. Katherine and Gaylen’s two children are now grown and have graduated from college. The couple is now retired and live in their home of 50 years in Moss Beach.
About 15 years ago, Katherine experienced a health crisis and began to think about her will. While the Eslingers had been SF State legacy donors for many years, they now realized they wished to deepen this relationship. “It was super important for me to set up the scholarship in memory of my parents and in honor of my three sisters because we are very close,” says Katherine. “And we have worked very hard to be where we are now.”
When Katherine learned about SF State’s Metro College Success Program (Metro) she knew it was a perfect match for her and Gaylen’s donations. Metro uses targeted outreach to support first-generation, low-income, and/or historically underrepresented students in their success at San Francisco State University. The program is demonstrably successful – Metro students have very high graduation and retention rates.
Katherine and Gaylen first made a planned gift to the Metro program and later established and endowed the George & Helen Kallianis Memorial Scholarship, which awards one $1,000 scholarship to a Metro student a year. “To extend financial opportunity to young struggling students seems the perfect way to share Katherine’s life and her experiences,” says Gaylen. Katherine agrees: “I know that $1,000 a year for a student nowadays is not a lot, but I had a real hard time buying books when I was a student, and that was tough. I keep thinking of the smaller things like that that might help students now and in the future. An endowed scholarship goes on forever, so this scholarship will be in perpetuity.”
The Eslingers today
