To Be Matched Dollar-for-Dollar by The Hodson Trust
Chestertown, MD, June 30, 2004 — The William R. Kenan Jr. Charitable Trust of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, has made a gift of $1 million to Washington College in order to establish the William R. Kenan Jr. Endowment Fund for Faculty Development. The Fund will be used to enhance faculty salaries and to finance faculty research, conferences, course development and sabbaticals. The gift will be doubled in value to $2 million through dollar-for-dollar matching by The Hodson Trust.
“On occasion, the Kenan Charitable Trust has made donations to liberal arts colleges, especially those with a strong commitment to undergraduate teaching,” said Dr. Richard Krasno, Executive Director of the Trust. “In this case, after a campus visit to Washington College where we met with faculty, administration and students, we were particularly impressed by the students' love for the college and their professors. The college's emphasis on teaching excellence and its benefits for students were abundantly clear to us.”
The Kenan Charitable Trust is named for William R. Kenan, Jr., a chemical engineer who was instrumental in the discovery of the process of converting calcium carbide to acetylene and the construction of major carbide and acetylene plants at the turn of the century. He later became president of the Flagler System companies of railroads and resorts, and owner of Western Block Company, then the largest block and tackle maker in the country. In his later years, Mr. Kenan's interests turned more and more to philanthropy and his desire to commemorate the Kenan name. Following his death in 1965, a major portion of his estate was used to establish the Trust, and since then the Trust has been a generous benefactor of educational institutions around the nation.
The Hodson Trust, established in 1920 by the family of Beneficial Corporation founder Colonel Clarence Hodson, benefits four Maryland educational institutions: Washington College, Hood College, Johns Hopkins University and St. John's College. Since its founding, The Hodson Trust has awarded in excess of $149 million in support of higher education in Maryland.
“With sincere gratitude and for the entire faculty, I thank the trustees of the Kenan Charitable Trust and the Hodson Trust for their support of Washington College,” said Dr. Baird Tipson, President of the College. “Their gifts are a vote of confidence for our institution, a compliment to the talent and hard work of our faculty, and a testimony to the fact that the momentum of our recent $103 million campaign has not abated.”
