When you make a gift to Lehigh’s endowment, you’re taking the long view. You’re thinking ahead and making a difference, in perpetuity, for the next generation — and the generation after that. A gift to the endowment affords Lehigh consistent strength and reliability to weather the uncertainties of any age, as our relative financial stability during the coronavirus pandemic can attest. The endowment’s impact is felt all over campus, by individuals, departments, colleges, and disciplines: It supports an entire community and shapes the character of the institution. Lehigh’s endowment supports scholarship and financial aid. Ensuring that the best and brightest students can attend and succeed at Lehigh is always a priority. Endowed funds like the Arthur C. Tauck Jr. Scholarship and the Tauck Scholars Program, which supports international internships and experiential learning for undergraduates in the College of Business, lead the way. When the Tauck Scholars Program celebrated 25 years in 2020, participant John Larson ’17 reflected on how it had enabled him to see beyond the bubble he’d grown up in — and “gain fresh perspective on what really mattered back home.” Since 1995, 111 scholars have had life-changing, globespanning experiences, all without financial burdens. Lehigh’s endowment supports chairs and professorships, like the Francis J. Trembley Chair in Earth and Environmental Sciences. Endowed by biologist Marjorie Nemes, Ph.D., ’51 and named in honor of a cherished Lehigh professor, the inaugural chair is held by Anne Meltzer, Ph.D. “It means a great deal to me personally,” Meltzer says. She fondly remembers meeting Nemes — “she was a fabulous woman” — and feeling a kinship over the challenges they both faced as women in STEM fields. The chair comes with an endowed fellowship, which provides critical opportunities for graduate students, and a discretionary fund for travel, data collection, and the ability for Meltzer to initiate new research, which is so necessary to remain competitive for grant funding. The fellowship and funding have all been “magnificent and useful,” says Meltzer, “and wonderful for helping students achieve their goals.” Lehigh’s endowment allows departments and services university-wide to be flexible and strategic and to recognize outstanding individuals. The Grace Schnabel University Libraries Endowment, permanently endowed in memory of James Heller Schnabel ’31 and Grace Swift Schnabel through a $1 million bequest from Mrs. Schnabel, grants the library the flexibility to invest in and add to its collections in times of both precarity and progress, most recently supporting the library’s launch of a digital and leisure reading collection highlighting underrepresented voices. In the Department of Music, the Michael C. “Bear” Sebastian Endowed Choral Arts Fund — endowed by his father, John C. Sebastian, after Bear’s passing — provides support for choir tours and awards that recognize individual choristers. “It is an honor and a privilege to receive the Bear Sebastian prize!” says Quinton Ritchie ’22. The civil engineering student already knows he “will always remember” his experiences singing with the university choir and the glee club. Lehigh’s endowment is itself a kind of memory: a living history, a legacy in the making. It represents the spirit of interdisciplinarity — of interconnectedness and the strength of the whole — in practice and tells the oldest, longest Lehigh story: The university was founded in 1865 by a $3 million initial unrestricted endowment from Asa Packer himself. Support for the endowment today is not only a tradition carried forward by everyone who contributes, but a promise for the future that, because of your generosity, the Lehigh we love can grow and adapt to meet the needs of the centuries. 13
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