Hartford, Conn., October 18, 2006—Trinity College announced today the receipt of three anonymous philanthropic commitments totaling $39.5 million.
These expressions of philanthropy represent the donors’ interests in three fundamental areas: endowed faculty chairs; financial aid opportunities for recruiting international students, and general endowment. All gifts, once in hand, will be added to the College’s endowment.
Six new distinguished endowed faculty chairs will be added to the College’s portfolio when the donors complete their gifting. Each of the chairs will be funded at $3 million. At present, the College has 29 endowed faculty chairs. These new chairs will be utilized to retain exemplary members of the current faculty and to recruit talented academic leaders to Trinity’s campus.
Five million dollars is being earmarked for the recruitment of international students, with preference to students from Eastern Europe. At present, Trinity has enrolled 47 students from 29 foreign countries. In recent history, several international students have graduated with academic honors, including valedictorians in 2005 and 2006.
The balance of the gifts is targeted for the College’s general endowments to improve the level of unrestricted income and to help reduce the College’s reliance on tuition. At present, about 70 percent of the College’s operating budget comes from tuition and fees.
Approximately $12 million of these recent pledges has been paid to date. The balance will be received in increments over the next several years.
Commenting on the gift investments in Trinity, James F. Jones, Jr., Trinity College President and Professor in the Humanities observed: “These commitments to Trinity are simply extraordinary, and strategically important. The size and breadth of a college’s endowment seeds educational opportunity, and these milestone gifts enable us to bolster our commitment to attracting and retaining the brightest and most talented students and the highest-caliber faculty, both locally and globally.”
Trinity College is an independent, nonsectarian liberal arts college that was founded in 1823 in historic Hartford, Connecticut. The College’s 2,300 undergraduates are drawn from all parts of the U.S. and nearly 30 foreign countries. The faculty includes winners of the Pulitzer Prize, the MacArthur, Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and other national awards. The College is home to the eighth-oldest chapter of Phi Beta Kappa in the country. With its long history of academic excellence, Trinity is consistently ranked among the country’s top liberal arts colleges.