October 8, 1999

Board of Regents awards Loyola $240,000

At its summer ceremony, the Board of Regents awarded Loyola University grants totaling $240,000 to help create six endowed professorships. The latest grants make a total of more than $2.1 million the Board of Regents has presented to Loyola.

In the Endowed Professorship Program, colleges and universities must raise $60,000 from private contributions for each professorship in order to receive the regent's $40,000 match. The value of an endowed professorship is $100,000. Thus, an endowed professorship is a celebration of merging private and public funds to support higher education.

At the August 31 ceremony at LSU Medical Center, University President Bernard Knoth, S.J., publicly thanked the contributors for their steadfast support of the university. With the most recent grants, Loyola established the following six professorships: William Hutchinson Professorship in the College of Arts and Sciences; Shawn Donnelley Professorship for the Center for Nonprofit Communications in the Department of Communications; Eleanor Sarpy Professorship in the School of Law; Rev. John Keller, S.J., Professorship in the Department of Mathematics; David P. Swanzy Professorship in the College of Music; and Rita Odenheimer Huntsinger Professorship in the College of Music.

The William Hutchinson Professorship was made possible by the generosity of Hutchinson, a 1938 graduate of the pharmacy school. This is the second time he has endowed a professorship.

Shawn Donnelley, a 1991 graduate of the Department of Communications and a member of the Board of Trustees, continues her outstanding financial support of the university. Donnelley's philanthropy will support the communications graphics lab named in her honored. Since its inception, the Shawn Donnelley Center for Nonprofit Communications has helped students create public relations and advertising projects for more than 50 nonprofit organizations.

To honor their mother, Courtney, Anne, John, and Henry Sarpy established the Eleanor Sarpy Professorship. The pledge honors a commitment made by their father, Leon Sarpy, a 1928 undergraduate and 1931 law graduate who taught in the School of Law for 54 years. Mr. Sarpy died in January 1998.

The unselfish work of Rev. John Keller, S.J., who died earlier this year, was memorialized in a professorship made by friends of the late faculty member who also served on the Board of Regents. Keller served as an educator and administrator at Loyola for 23 years.

Loyola benefactor Adelaide Wisdom Benjamin donated funds to establish the David P. Swanzy Professorship. Benjamin recently ended a 10-year term on the Loyola Board of Trustees and provided outstanding service as co-chair of Thresholds, Loyola's successful capital campaign that raised $51.3 million. Swanzy, who served for 20 years as dean of the College of Music, received this tremendous honor in recognition of his work with Benjamin to stabilize the financial status of the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra.

Rita Huntsinger's husband, Merle, endowed the Rita Odenheimer Huntsinger Professorship. Rita serves as chair of the College of Music Visiting Committee and is a member of the Loyola Board of Trustees.

Philanthropy is an essential part of Loyola's future and the university joins with Knoth in applauding all the contributors and the Board of Regents for their support of academic excellence.