$600,000 endownment given to new USU program
The religious studies program at Utah State University, still waiting for official approval, has received an endowment of $600,000 from the Tanner Charitable Trust to purchase library resources.
USU History Department Head Norm Jones said the endowment is badly needed and came as a welcome surprise.
“If you’re going to offer a degree, you have to have the library resources to back it up,” he said. “The budget is already under intense stress, so we knew were going to have to come up with a way.”
“We were delighted they met it so completely,” he said of the endowment.
Jones said the new program is still going through the official process for approval, but expects to be able to enroll students by Fall 2006. The library resources were examined in preparation for the program and needs were found, he said.
“We found some strengths and we found some holes. We’re pretty strong in Christianity and very strong in Mormonism because of our special collections,” he said.
But resources referencing Islam, Asian religions and Judaism would need to be increased in order to provide students with a complete education, Jones said.
“[The endowment] is extremely important because it will provide resources scholars will need and students will be able to use,” Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Dean Gary Kiger said.
Jones, who has taught in the area of religious studies for 26 years, said the need for a religious studies degree at USU has been recognized by many faculty and students.
“We’re a natural for a place to study religion and how you do it,” he said. “If you think about it, religion is much more important on this campus than race or ethnicity. Your religion is one of the first things you ask people.”
Kiger said while the program will inititially offer only an undergraduate degree, he said the are places for it to quickly expand into graduate studies.
“We have a fair number of professors in our college who teach in the area of religious studies anyway,” he said. “This will be a reallly attractive program for our students and for our faculty.”
Religious studies applies and holds interest for many students other than religion, he said, including those students studying anthropology, sociology and philosophy.
Jones said the addition of the religious studies program will increase the prestige of the university and heighten its appeal to many students who wish to study in these areas. USU will be the only university in Utah to offer an objective religious degree and one of the few in the western United States, Jones said.
The new program will include many courses that are already offered at USU, Kiger said, and thanks to the endowment will have the funds to provide students with resources.
“The beauty of an endowment is it’s amount of money that will draw interest and keeps on giving into the future,” Kiger said.
Jones said the religious studies program will be able to use the interest gained from the $600,000 endowment each year to purchase new resources – estimated about $35,000 per year.
Payments will be made in installments over the next three years, Jones said.
“Fundraising is all about establishing your eyes of the person you are asking money from,” Jones said.
The Tanner Charitable Trust has been very generous in funding religion and humanities-oriented events at USU in the past, Jones said, including the O.C. Tanner Symposium.
-bnelson@cc.usu.edu