Generous alumni and friends helped make 2014-15 the College of Arts and Sciences’ third-best fundraising year ever, with gifts and commitments totaling $55.7 million.
The new gifts will provide faculty with support ranging from professorships and fellowships to research funding, and students with undergraduate research and study abroad funds. Private support is also helping to renovate historic Hill Hall’s auditorium and rotunda.
“Our donors want students to have access to mentored research opportunities, study abroad scholarships and hands-on academic internships,” said Karen M. Gil, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. “They want faculty to have the resources they need to inspire students and conduct the highest levels of scholarship. I am grateful that our donors support students and faculty so generously with private gifts that encourage innovative learning and teaching.”
Fundraising for the College peaked in fiscal years 2007 ($55.8 million) and 2008 ($57.9 million, the No. 1 year), the final years of the university-wide Carolina First campaign and those just prior to the recession.
“Donors expressed confidence in the direction of the College and Carolina during a very difficult year in our long history,” said Vicki Craver ’92, chair of the Arts and Sciences Foundation board of directors from 2012 to 2015.
Gift highlights in 2014-15 include:
- A $5 million gift from an anonymous alumni couple that provides the College dean with “say yes” funds for department chairs who can use the fund to recruit or retain valued faculty members, pay for summer research expenses, support faculty in their teaching or scholarly work, or to further the chair’s own research. A $1 million gift in 2010 from the same couple has benefited more than 200 College faculty.
- The Robert F. and Patricia A. Young and the 1957 Carolina Basketball Team Professorship of Poetry Fund through a $2 million planned gift from Bob Young, a member of the famed championship squad. Young said that his wife, Pat, who died in April 2015, loved poetry.
- Gifts totaling $2.59 million to help renovate historic Hill Hall, including several of $100,000 or more to The James and Susan Moeser Auditorium, which will honor the former chancellor and his wife and their love of music.
- Two new faculty fellowships in the Institute for the Arts and Humanities from Barbara Rosser Hyde ’83 and the Hyde Family Foundations, as well as from John Townsend ’77 in honor of his wife, Marree Shore Townsend ’77. IAH provides on-campus semester fellowships for faculty to pursue research and develop new courses and programs in a collaborative setting.
- A gift of $1 million to Honors Carolina to create undergraduate summer research fellowships. Anne L. Robinson ’63 (English) and S. Epes Robinson ’61 (B.S.B.A.) created the endowment for students to pursue a program of study on some aspect of the history and culture of the West, including Europe and the Mediterranean region.
- A planned gift of $3.5 million to support the Davenport Scholarship for Excellence in the Natural and Mathematical Sciences Fund in the College of Arts and Sciences.
The Arts and Sciences Foundation celebrates its 40th year of fundraising and stewardship in 2015. With assets of more than $200 million, the Foundation raises private support for the College of Arts and Sciences, UNC-Chapel Hill’s oldest and largest academic unit, where all students spend their first two years and 70 percent of undergraduates earn their degrees.
