Last summer, when the OSU Foundation raised funds in 40 days to endow more than 175 chairs and professorships, the College of Arts and Sciences was one of the big winners. That historic achievement included securing funds for nine chairs and professorships for the college, bringing its total to 24. Endowed professorships and chairs provide support for faculty salaries, graduate assistantships, equipment and other research needs. These endowed faculty positions allow a university to attract and retain the best and brightest academic minds in the world. But these gifts do even more. They help the college maintain certain ideals important to its students, alumni and constituents. Alumni Provide Gifts of Hope, Integrity Professional Integrity Tulsa residents Bill and Peggy Welch, 1973 journalism alumna, donated $250,000 to establish a sports journalism chair in the School of Journalism and Broadcasting. Matched by Boone Pickens, the Regents and the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, the gift’s impact is $1.5 million in endowed funds. The couple gave the gift to honor a friend, sports writer B.A. Bridgewater, and to teach quality sports reporting and writing as exemplified by the writing of Bridgewater and his protégé, Bill Connors, both of whom worked for the Tulsa World. “These two individuals were contemporaries of writers Red Smith, Bob Considine, John R. Tunis, Grantland Rice, Jim Murray, Harold Keith, John Cronley and others who set the gold standard of reporting honestly and accurately without abusing the enormous power that goes with sports reporting, sports writing and commenting,” says Bill Welch. College of Arts and Sciences 12 development
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjAxMjk=