Scholarship will require students to engage in community service.
Howard and Louise Phanstiel, who donated $20 million to Syracuse University in 2010 for scholarships.Just after Howard Phanstiel earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Syracuse University in the early 1970s, he made a small donation.
“The first year out of school I sent a check for $50,” recalled Phanstiel, a retired health insurance executive, “and then they didn’t hear from me for 35 years.”
But when SU finally heard again from Phanstiel, it was music to the school’s ears. He and his wife, Louise, donated $5 million for an endowed professor chair at the Maxwell school in 2006. They also gave $1.2 million toward the Carmelo K. Anthony Basketball Center.
That, it turns out, was just the beginning. Today, SU will formally announce that the Phanstiels will give $20 million toward a scholarship fund for middle-class students. It’s the second-largest single gift ever to SU from an individual.
The largest single gift from an individual was $28.8 million from the estate of Frederic N. Schwartz, a 1931 graduate and former chief executive officer of what was then Bristol-Myers Co.
The Phanstiels, who live in Los Angeles, said they watched with concern as college costs continued to climb at the same time the recession was eating away at the income and assets of the families of middle-class students.
“They were at serious risk of not being able to attend college,” Louise Phanstiel said. “We truly believe in the value of education, and the next thing we wanted to do in a more meaningful way was to put together a program to address this need.”
The Louise and Howard Phanstiel Scholars program will do more than help students pay for college, she said. By requiring students to help organize a lecture that promotes giving and to engage in community service, the program will help students develop a lifelong devotion to serving others.
“The spirit of philanthropy is so important to our society, and giving of your time and effort is as important as giving your money,” Louise Phanstiel said. “Once someone has become philanthropic, the joy and reward you get back is tenfold.”
The program will start in fall 2011 and will help dozens of students each year, said SU spokesman Kevin Quinn.
Howard Phanstiel said he was approached by the university’s development office several years ago about helping the Maxwell School, where he obtained a master’s degree in 1971. He joined the Maxwell advisory board in 2005, and a year later the Phanstiels established an endowed chair with a $5 million donation — the largest ever given to Maxwell.
Phanstiel said he and his wife were so impressed with the dedication Carmelo Anthony had to SU, which he attended just one year before joining the NBA, that they decided to give money to the basketball center.
Howard Phanstiel joined the university board of trustees in 2007 and was one of three co-chairs of the college’s capital campaign that seeks to raise $1 billion. In 2008, during the depths of the recession, he led a $1 million fundraising effort that provided money to more than 425 students who were struggling to pay their college bills.
Phanstiel hopes the new scholarship program will inspire similar ideas around the country.
“It may be that this excites other donors and institutions to begin making gifts to universities that contemplate this holistic, well-rounded approach,” he said.
Contact Glenn Coin at gcoin@syracuse.com or 470-3251.