Loyola University announced yesterday that it received the largest gift in its history from Ed Hanway, Class of 1974, and his wife Ellen. The $5.2 million gift from Hanway, who is the head of the university’s board of trustees, will support a number of key initiatives, including its global studies program, York Road Initiative, and living-learning communities for first-year students, as well as create a new, endowed, full-tuition scholarship.
The Hanways’ gift stems from the longstanding, positive impact the University has had on their family, and on the belief in its potential for future success. “Loyola is at an interesting point in its history, with a solid strategy in place that really cuts to the core of what the university is about—programs and education, not buildings,” said Ed Hanway, a Media, Pa., resident who retired as chief executive officer of CIGNA in 2009.
The University’s global studies program, an interdisciplinary major combining economics, political science, history, and sociology, is the largest beneficiary of the Hanways’ gift. Their support will allow for the creation of an endowed faculty chair and endowed speakers’ series, as well as provide additional resources for faculty scholarship.
The gift also provides additional funding for Loyola’s planned living-learning program, set to launch in the fall of 2013. While many colleges and universities—including Loyola—offer living-learning experiences in which students take one or more courses with immediate neighbors in their residence halls, Loyola’s will be unusual in extending the experience to all first-year students, and in the depth and breadth of extra- and co-curricular programs it includes.
Additional resources would also be made available for Loyola’s York Road Initiative, a University-wide effort to improve the quality of life for those living, working, and learning in the neighborhoods just east of Loyola’s Evergreen campus in North Baltimore, as well as for the creation of an endowed, full-tuition scholarship.
