(Radio Iowa) — A faculty member and alumna of a struggling Iowa college is donating half a million dollars to keep the school open. Iowa Wesleyan. Biology professor Dolores Poulter Wilson wants her school in Mt. Pleasant to stay open much longer than that.

“I could do a whole lot with a half million dollars. That even staggers me, you know? But what would’ve been the gain there? And we’re at a critical point,” Wilson says. Wilson says she graduated from Iowa Wesleyan with one dollar and 87 cents to her name, and that she only got her degree because of the school’s scholarships and donations. She went on to teach a the school for 56 years.