Enhancing Honors Education

The Schreyer Honors College, which owes its creation in 1997 to a visionary endowed gift, is one of Penn State's keystone academic programs, attracting undergraduates of exceptional ability from around the nation and abroad.

Rich and Ann Marie Whitney of Manhattan Beach, California, know that in order to compete successfully for the very best students, the Schreyer Honors College needs additional private support. Rich himself was an honors student, graduating from Penn State in 1989 as a University Scholar in the Smeal College of Business. He now heads his own private equity investment firm.

The Whitneys created the Rich and Ann Marie Whitney Trustee Scholarship to benefit honors students. Trustee Scholarships, designed to keep a Penn State education accessible to all qualified students regardless of their financial means, have a unique matching component: The University matches 5 percent of the principal of each gift annually and combines these funds with income from the endowment to effectively double the financial impact of the scholarship.

"We view our gift as an investment in the future of exceptionally talented young men and women. For many, without some form of assistance, the cost of a Penn State education would be prohibitive or impose a very significant burden on their family. For each, their engagement with the honors college will put them on a path that offers the opportunity to impact the future of Penn State, their chosen professions, their communities, and quite possibly the world."

–Rich and Ann Marie Whitney

Enriching the Student Experience

Students can reach their fullest potential for academic achievement and personal growth when they have opportunities for community service, creative expression, global involvement, and similar experiences that enrich their education. The Raymond A. Bowers Program for Excellence in Design and Construction of the Built Environment provides such enrichment for students in the Departments of Architectural Engineering, Architecture, and Landscape Architecture.

Raymond Bowers, a 1931 Penn State graduate in Architectural Engineering, had a wealth of practical experience as head of Lewis C. Bowers & Sons, a leading New Jersey-based building design and construction firm. Years before he passed away, he used gift planning to establish the endowment that today bears his name in order to help students better prepare to become leaders in the design and construction industry. The endowment supports interdisciplinary programming and projects, and exposes students to best professional practices within the industry.

Income from the Bowers endowment supported design and construction of MorningStar, a house built by the Penn State Solar Decathlon Team. MorningStar won fourth place in the Department of Energy's 2007 Solar Decathlon. A team of students and faculty took two years to build an entirely solar-powered home to be entered into the international competition. The house will now be used as an educational tool at Penn State's Center for Sustainability.

Building Faculty Strength and Capacity

A truly exceptional education is one that offers students opportunities to study with the finest teachers and researchers—scholars who have achieved preeminence in their fields and whose work can inspire similar achievements in their students. Endowed chairs and professorships enable Penn State to recruit and retain scientists, artists, engineers, and many other kinds of world-renowned scholars. Similarly, endowed graduate assistantships and fellowships enable the University to attract top-flight graduate students, who themselves are only a few years away from establishing distinguished careers in business and industry, public service, education, and many other fields.

Donald and Virginia Davis endowed the Don Davis Professorship in Ethics, in the College of Communications. Don Davis is a 1942 Penn State graduate in Journalism. The Davis Professor is Patrick Parsons, who coordinates an ethics across-the-curriculum program that encourages students and faculty to not only discuss ethical principles, but also live them.

"The whole impact of a professorship in ethics—not only the impact it would have on the College of Communications but how that impact would spread throughout the University—I just thought it would be a great idea."

–Don Davis

Fostering Discovery and Creativity

Penn State students and faculty thrive in an atmosphere of intellectual discovery. Pathways for discovery are especially diverse in an interdisciplinary environment, where traditional boundaries of learning are pushed aside in the quest for new knowledge and new solutions to old problems. Ultimately, such a commitment to innovation allows Penn State to better serve society.

Philanthropy plays a critical role in encouraging and enabling interdisciplinary scholarship and creativity, as exemplified by the Nicholas and Gelsa Pelick Biotechnology Innovation Fund. The Pelick Fund provides seed grants to support short-term interdisciplinary research on high-risk and fundamentally new ideas in the life sciences, such as Assistant Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics Melik Demirel's investigations in biomaterials, polymers, nanofabrication, protein engineering, biosensors, and molecular modeling. Once they are up and running, the most promising research projects can then be positioned to receive long-term support from more traditional funding sources, such as public agencies and corporate foundations.

Nicholas Pelick, who holds bachelor's and master's degrees from Penn State, is a retired co-founder of a research and development company.

"Dolly and I believe that this endowment is important to the life sciences at Penn State for the continuity of short–term research of novel ideas to expansion to long–term research. This brings in much–needed outside funding to allow faculty to excel in the research of new ideas, and the opportunity to advance into new areas of biological and medical research."

–Nicholas Pelick

Sustaining a Tradition of Quality

Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center has earned high marks in such diverse areas as patient care, operating efficiency, and specialized fields of research and treatment. Most recently, Penn State Hershey Children's Hospital is listed in U.S. News & World Report's 2008 edition of "America's Best Children's Hospitals." But sustaining a tradition of quality requires continuous support.

Penn State Hershey Medical Center aims to complete construction of a new children's hospital by 2012 with the help of $65 million in philanthropy. The new facility gives high priority to a family–focused environment that affords more privacy for families and patients. In support of the new hospital, Edward and Jeanne Arnold of Lebanon, Pennsylvania, have created an endowment that provides seed money for the Hummingbird Program, a service that offers comprehensive medical, psychological, social, and spiritual support for children facing life–threatening, complex medical conditions, and for their families.

The Arnolds are vice–chairs of the medical center campaign committee, and Jeanne Arnold serves on the Penn State Hershey Children's Hospital executive committee.

"Ed and I became interested in supporting a program that would enhance patient care through our involvement with the Children's Hospital. The opportunity for the Hummingbird Program was presented to us as a suggestion from parents who wanted a palliative-care program. We met with two mothers who shared their stories, and then we saw for ourselves the need for underwriting and funding a program like this. Dr. Gary Ceneviva also was very interested in such a program. The hummingbird is such a beautiful, magical little bird—a little fighter—that we felt it was a perfect symbol for these kids."

–Jeanne Arnold