October 28, 1999
Contact:
Tom Krattenmaker
610-328-8534
[email protected]
http://www.swarthmore.edu/Home/News/
Swarthmore to Use Michener Bequest to Strengthen Faculty Research
Swarthmore College, the primary beneficiary of the estate of the late James Michener, is devoting the bulk of the funds to the support of faculty research and development as a means of furthering the College's central mission in undergraduate education.
Michener, a 1929 Swarthmore graduate, bequeathed his residual estate and the rights to all his literary property to his alma mater upon his death in 1997. As with his previous gifts to Swarthmore, Michener entrusted the College to determine how best to use the funds.
Michener, who once called his Swarthmore education his "passport into a wild and vivid life of the mind," made gifts to the College totaling approximately $7.2 million during his lifetime. Before his death, he also named Swarthmore the beneficiary of his residual estate, which totals roughly $6.5 million. In addition, he bequeathed the rights to all his literary property to his alma mater, entitling Swarthmore to royalties on sales of his 43 books, including such bestsellers as Alaska, Hawaii, and Space. Those royalties are expected to amount to several hundred thousand dollars a year, depending on sales and other activity in the marketplace.
Swarthmore will use the majority of the $6.5 million to support faculty research and professional development through increased sabbatical leaves. The College currently provides professors one-semester leave from teaching every fourth year, and a select number are awarded a second semester for particularly compelling projects. With the Michener gift, Swarthmore expects to increase the number of full-year leaves awarded annually from eight to 12.
In addition to teaching full course loads and working with students outside of class, Swarthmore's approximately 170 professors produce several dozen books a year as well as hundreds of research articles.
"Support of active faculty scholarship is essential to the finest undergraduate education," Swarthmore President Alfred H. Bloom said. "Through their scholarship, faculty members offer powerful models to students of what it means to actively engage the creation of knowledge. Through inviting students to participate with them in that scholarship, they transform their students into colleagues in the articulation, testing, and shaping of ideas.
"James Michener's life and works exemplify the passion for rigorous scholarly inquiry in the service of a better world that is at the heart of the Swarthmore tradition. Nothing would give Jim greater satisfaction than supporting faculty in that scholarly inquiry."
In addition to supporting faculty research leaves, an amount of $1 million from the Michener estate is being used to upgrade a position in the Mathematics Department to retain an extraordinary young faculty member in a tenure-track position. That professor is Garikai Campbell, a 1990 Swarthmore graduate who received his Ph.D. in mathematics from Rutgers University in 1998.
Swarthmore, located near Philadelphia, is a liberal arts college with enrollment of approximately 1,375. Swarthmore is ranked the No. 1 liberal arts college in the country by U.S. News & World Report.
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