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  • Forever Orange - The Campaign for Syracuse University

    Maxwell in the Forever Orange Campaign

    These are important times for the United States, for democracy, and for the world. And they are important times for the Maxwell School, which exists to sort out the biggest issues of society, while preparing leaders and citizens for their roles in public life.

    Maxwell is taking extraordinary steps to meet the challenges of the era. We are creating new research initiatives—and enhancing many of those that exist, so as to better inform public policy and gain a deeper understanding of society. We are creating named faculty positions and filling them with scholars who not only conduct such research, but also prepare future researchers to do the same. And, in particular, we are optimizing Maxwell’s advantages for undergraduates—many of them future public leaders, all of them future engaged citizens.

    In all this work, Maxwell remains doggedly interdisciplinary, because complex public challenges require broad approaches. Maxwell is still the only major school of public affairs mixing the social sciences, policy research, and professional degrees.

    Amid these efforts, in late 2019, Syracuse University announced the Forever Orange campaign. Within it lies $125 million in funding priorities for Maxwell. The campaign also incentivizes Maxwell to attract 125,000 unique donors, to symbolize the breadth of School support.

    All who have ever supported Maxwell, or even considered supporting Maxwell, are encouraged to make a new investment in the School. For Maxwell, and for the world, it matters now more than ever.

    Campaign priorities

    Over the life of the Forever Orange campaign, Maxwell will raise $125 million to fund priorities contained in the School’s long-range strategic plan. As of early 2020, our donors have already moved us to meet almost half of our goal!

    With this incredible support, our start is strong. To meet our campaign goals, we will raise the remaining $65 million to support the following priorities from the School’s long-range strategic plan.

    Student Access and Experience

    This is Maxwell’s top campaign priority, which will provide support for financial aid for both graduate and undergraduate students and undergraduate research.

    Faculty Support

    Maxwell hopes to create, through major naming gifts:

    • seven endowed professorships (each requiring $2 million of support);
    • thirty faculty fellowships (at $100,000 each); and
    • with $5 million each, three specialized faculty posts: a Visiting Ambassador in Residence, Visiting Executive in Residence, and the Maxwell Deanship.


    Gifts will also augment the existing Astrid Merget Fund (which supports professors based in D.C.) and the Tenth Decade Fund (which provides seed funding for entrepreneurial, interdisciplinary faculty research projects.

    Discretionary Support

    This campaign priority allows the School to support immediate priorities and needs. Half will go to the Dean’s Fund, through which School leadership seizes upon emerging opportunities and meets unforeseen challenges. In recent years, the Dean’s Fund has supported individual faculty research projects, provided start-up funding for Maxwell’s now-thriving X Lab, and allowed a handful of promising students to address unforeseen financial challenges.

    Aside from the Dean’s Fund, discretionary gifts have supported programming for politically active veterans, Community Geography projects focused on refugee populations in Syracuse, and a new academic program at the nexus of geography and economics.

    Research Center Support

    Rounding out the campaign goals, Maxwell aims to underwrite research activities in the School’s interdisciplinary research centers and institutes.

    Facility Upgrades

    As well, we wish to fund facility upgrades, including new and improved spaces serving the School’s undergraduate population.

  • Giving Stories

    Purser named Montonna Professor, recognizing work with undergraduates

    Gretchen Purser, associate professor of sociology, has been named the Dr. Ralph E. Montonna Professor at the Maxwell School. The professorship was established in 1997 with a substantial gift from the honoree’s daughter, Mary Lou Williams, a Maxwell School alumna (1950, BA, American studies) and long-time resident of Remsen, N.Y., who died in 2017. The fund is designed to provide support, in the form of a supplemental research fund, to a professor with notable engagement in undergraduate education. 

     

    Cademartori bequest supports Maxwell School undergraduates

    Future undergraduates majoring in history or economics at the Maxwell School will benefit from scholarship funds provided, in his will, by alumnus Dominick Cademartori ’52 BA (Econ). Cademartori’s $30,000 gift is intended to extend the legacy of his own studies as a first-generation American and first-generation college student for whom college was nearly discontinued owing to financial hardship.

     

    Alumnus’s undergraduate scholarship gift serves as Mother’s Day honor

    A bequest arrangement made by Maxwell School alumnus Jonathan R. Hancock ’95 MA (Geog) will honor his mother while providing scholarship assistance to undergraduates in select Maxwell disciplines, who demonstrate an interest in bettering the Syracuse and Central New York region.

     

    New scholarship honors EMPA alumna Theresa Flynn

    A new scholarship fund, benefiting professional master’s students interested in organizational change and development, has been created to honor Theresa A. "Terry" Flynn, whose many connections to the Maxwell School included earning an Executive MPA in 2012. Flynn died in 2018 following a protracted battle with ALS.

     

    Maxwell School names inaugural Palmer Fellows

    MPA students Katherine Gibson and Haley Smith are pursuing their studies this year as the first-ever beneficiaries of the John L. and Stephanie G. Palmer Public Administration Fellowship Fund. This fellowship was recently created by Dean Emeritus John L. Palmer and his wife Stephanie in order to provide financial support and mentoring to a select group of MPA students each year.

     

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