Giving
Donations to LAS
Gifts in Action: Meredith Mallory, AB '40 Sciences and Letters
Lifelong Donor Pledges Her Estate
$6 million allocated to encourage innovative scholarship in the humanities.
Education always mattered to Arlys Streitmatter Conrad.
The daughter of an Illinois farmer and teacher, Mrs. Conrad was strongly encouraged in her pursuit of higher education. She always aspired to attend the University of Illinois and in 1940 she received a four-year scholarship. She earned her bachelor’s degree in education.
After graduation, her success continued in the corporate world while she also managed the family’s centennial farm. She established several scholarships at the University and always enjoyed meeting the students who received the scholarships.
Now, Mrs. Conrad has honored the University with a $12 million estate gift to be shared equally by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences. Her gift allows the two colleges to address their most pressing priorities.
In the College of LAS, the importance of supporting innovative and emerging scholarship in the humanities is clear.
“One of the most significant pressures we face in LAS is retaining our top talent, particularly the scholars reaching the most highly productive period of their careers,” says College of LAS Dean Ruth Watkins. “With the generous gift to LAS from Arlys Conrad we are recognizing, rewarding, and advancing mid-career faculty, with a particular focus on scholars in humanities fields,” says Watkins.
These highly accomplished scholars will hold the Conrad recognition and receive an annual discretionary fund to support their scholarship for a five-year period. The inaugural cohort of Conrad Humanities Scholars are as follows:
- Associate Professor John Caughlin, Department of Communication
- Associate Professor Trish Loughran, Department of English
- Associate Professor Stephan Heilen, Department of the Classics
- Associate Professor John Randolph, Department of History
- Associate Professor Michael Rothberg, Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory, Department of English, Program in Jewish Culture and Society
Warmest congratulations to these leaders in humanities scholarship! The opportunity to nominate additional Conrad Humanities Scholars will be held on an annual basis.