Family gift to boost Renee Crown Honors Program

Family gift to boost Renee Crown Honors ProgramApril 10, 2003Sara Millersemortim@syr.edu

The family of emeritus trustee Renee Crown has announced a substantial gift to the Renee Crown University Honors program to help strengthen its offerings.

The honors program has been revised considerably during the past year, and last spring was named after Crown. The new program reflects the University’s undergraduate emphasis on writing and communication, global awareness, and civic understanding. The gift recognizes Crown’s many accomplishments on behalf of SU.

The new Renee Crown University Honors Program builds upon the University’s mission to provide qualified students with new academic opportunities and experiential challenges that traditionally have not been possible. Within this new approach, Honors Program students are encouraged and supported to propose new ways to satisfy their core requirements, often in a non-sequential manner, by creating new applications of the curriculum. For example, they might publish an article in a scientific journal, organize and manage a community service, write and direct a play or propose another self-initiated academic challenge that can potentially satisfy the requirements of a course traditionally taken in a classroom.

The family’s gift will support students’ ambition to accomplish these projects through a comprehensive array of experiences, which may include international travel, collaborative work at another institution, or attending research conferences. Beginning in Summer 2003, 10 scholarships will be available to talented research students to assist in these academic pursuits.

“Syracuse University is appreciative of this generous gift, which will bring our Honors Program the prominence it deserves,” says Chancellor and President Kenneth A. Shaw.

With its home in The College of Arts and Sciences, the Honors Program maintains a long tradition of providing qualified students with additional intellectual challenges and curricular enrichment opportunities. These options for outstanding undergraduate students include seminars, honors courses, and special cultural events–in addition to their traditional academic course of study in individual departments, colleges and schools.

As part of the Academic Plan, the Honors Program was re-examined in 2001 to determine how it could best provide students with a broad global and civic understanding. College of Arts and Sciences Dean Cathryn Newton and a committee of distinguished faculty from across SU’s schools and colleges conceived the Renee Crown University Honors Program framed around the goal of developing the following attributes in graduates: breadth; depth; global awareness; literacy and articulateness; collaborative capacity; and commitment to service.

“The new Renee Crown Honors Program defines an intellectual path that will challenge our most lustrous students,” said Newton.

Renee Crown, ’50, a College of Arts and Sciences graduate and longtime University trustee, is a civic leader and philanthropist. In addition to her dedicated service as a trustee, she has devoted much of her time and resources to the University community, serving on numerous boards and committees that further the academic mission of the University. She was the co-chair of leadership gifts for the Campaign for Syracuse, served on the executive committee of the $300 million Commitment to Learning Campaign and serves on the board of visitors for The College of Arts and Sciences. Most recently, she has been recognized with the Chancellor’s Medal for Outstanding Achievement, the George Arents Pioneer Medal and the Outstanding Alumni Award from the College of Arts and Sciences. She has also received an honorary doctorate of humane letters.