Meadville Lombard Grateful for Gifts Supporting

Programming, Location and Student Life

July 7, 2011

At General Assembly 2011 in Charlotte NC this year, Meadville Lombard was able to announce the following gifts to the school to help us in our relocation, our programming, and in providing more resources to our students. These gifts include:

• Martha Atherton of Countryside Church Unitarian Universalist in suburban Palatine, Illinois, is donating $1.8 million during the next ten years to defray the cost of our lease at our new location in Chicago's Loop. This $1.8 million gift is one of two gifts Ms. Atherton is making to the school. It is a transformational gift that will fundamentally change our seminary.
  
  
  
• The theology program of the Henry Luce Foundation is granting Meadville Lombard $200,000 for full implementation and assessment of the Master of Divinity degree program being offered through our TouchPoint Theological Education. The Luce Foundation is making a multi-year commitment to Meadville Lombard on a scale not often seen for seminaries.  We are grateful for the foundation's confidence and interest in our work.
  
  
  
• The Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Shelter Rock in Manhasset, New York, is granting $100,000 to the Liberal Religious Educators Association (LREDA), which is joining with Meadville Lombard to revitalize and expand the Sophia Lyon Fahs Center for Religious Education at Meadville Lombard. Dr. Mark Hicks, the Angus MacLean professor of religious education at Meadville Lombard, directs activities the center, which was founded to provide leadership for and direction to religious education. The grant will "initiate and maintain projects that challenge conventional thinking and practice within religious education while sparking educational innovation to encourage the professional development of lay and ordained leadership." Meadville Lombard is grateful for our partnership with LREDA, the direction Dr. Hicks is taking the Fahs Center since joining our faculty, and the generosity of the Shelter Rock congregation.
  
  
  
• The Meadville Lombard Board of Trustees voted to allocate $500,000 from the sale of the school's Hyde Park campus to augment the $1.5 million previously committed by the late Rev. Dr. J. Frank Schulman, DMin '74, DD '06, minister emeritus of Emerson Unitarian Universalist Church in Houston, Texas, and his wife, Alice Southworth Schulman, to fund the Frank and Alice Schulman Chair in Unitarian Universalist History. A search to find a historian to fill the chair will begin later this year. Meadville Lombard is grateful to Frank and Alice for their generosity, and for the work of the Unitarian Universalist Association, with leadership by the Rev. Terry Sweetser, UUA Vice President for Stewardship and Development, which joined with Meadville Lombard to create the necessary planning to realize for this landmark development in our school and its potential for all of Unitarian Universalism. Today, the value of the Schulman fund is $2.3 million.
  
  
  
• H. deForest Ralph of Emerson Unitarian Universalist Church in Houston, Texas, established the Martha Austine Ralph Fund at Meadville Lombard in honor of his wife and pledged $25,000 to it. The fund will cover costs so the Transylvanian Unitarian minister chosen annually to study at Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley, California, under that school's Francis Balázs Scholars Program can come to Meadville Lombard in January to enroll in an intensive course. This helps Meadville Lombard maintain ties to the Unitarians in Transylvania in addition to our ongoing English language instruction for seminarians there.
  
  
  
• Marion and Joe Wertheim of the Unitarian Church in Westport, Connecticut, are donating $25,000 to fund living expenses in 2011-12 of second- and third-year students who are fulfilling their 20-hour weekly responsibilities as congregational intern ministers. The internships are a requirement of the school's yearlong signature courses in Congregational and Leadership Studies. In this way, the Wertheims are also supporting the growing relationship between teaching pastors and students at Meadville Lombard, pioneering a new formation experience for ministers for the 21st Century.
  
  
  
• Martha Atherton is also donating $20,000 in each of the next ten years -- or $200,000 in total -- to fund studies at Meadville Lombard by students from other faith traditions and from other countries. Preference will be given to women applicants.
  
  
  
• The Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Shelter Rock voted to contribute a total of $40,000 in gifts from the congregation and its members for a new Barry M. Andrews Award at Meadville Lombard. Named for the Rev. Dr. Barry M. Andrews, DMin '76, DD '04, who is retiring from Shelter Rock as minister of religious education, the award will encourage students to take additional course work in religious education. The award supports Meadville Lombard's dedication to religious education as a discipline in seminary education, and pays honor to a congregation and a minister deeply dedicated to the best in lifelong religious education for Unitarian Universalists.