College blessed with financial support this year
Issue News Back Next

News-in-review

College blessed with financial support this year

Center for Service and Learning received $3 million

by Sara Foss

Many parts of the College are supported through the gifts of outside donors, and this year the Center for Service and Learning and Environmental Studies Program reaped the benefits of others' generosity.

In October, two years after President Nancy Dye established the Center for Service and Learning, the Center received a $3 million gift to support its operations.

The gift, a five-year pledge, was given by Jane and Eric Nord, longtime Oberlin residents. It is the largest outright gift the College has ever received from a living donor.

"It's a gift that supports both the community and the College. That's very special," Dye said in October.

Daniel Gardner, OC'90 and director of the Center for Service and Learning, said, "The gift really is nothing short of thrilling."

The Center for Service and Learning facilitates the interaction between community service and academics. It provides students with information and gets them involved with local community service opportunities. Since its inception, the Center has attracted or retained foundation support of more than $280,000 each year. During 1995-6, the Center placed 978 students in 70 local community service organizations.

The creation of the Center for Service and Learning in 1994 was made possible through a $500,000 gift from an anonymous donor. That money enabled the College to hire Gardner as Center director.

The gift, Gardner said, will allow the Center to assess how much impact the Center has in the surrounding community and provide increasingly innovative services and built-in stability.

In November the Environmental Studies Program received an Award of Excellence in Education from the Consolidated Natural Gas Company (CNG), along with a grant of $100,000. The money will go toward the construction of the new environmental studies center and help further develop the environmental studies program.

"I think it is a testament to a lot of work over the last 17 years of the program," Environmental Studies Program intern Brad Masi said in November.

"It's free money," Dye said. "The best kind."

CNG awards independent colleges that have developed programs creative solutions to environmental problems. Seventy-four institutions were invited to submit a program for award consideration.

According to Masi, CNG was impressed most by Oberlin's planned environmental studies center, as well as its role in the Black River Clean-up.


Oberlin

Copyright © 1997, The Oberlin Review.
Volume 125, Number 25, May 23, 1997

Contact Review webmaster with suggestions or comments at ocreview@www.oberlin.edu.
Contact Review editorial staff at oreview@oberlin.edu.