Chancellor Nancy Cantor, Steven R. Brechin make campaign leadership gift

Chancellor Nancy Cantor, Steven R. Brechin make campaign leadership giftOctober 31, 2007Kevin C. Quinnkcquinn@syr.edu

Syracuse University Chancellor and President Nancy Cantor and her husband, Steven R. Brechin, have made a $1 million planned gift to the institution’s capital campaign, The Campaign for Syracuse University.

The capital campaign will be launched publicly with a daylong series of campus events on Friday, Nov. 2, and is the most ambitious in the history of the University, with an anticipated goal of $1 billion. The Cantor-Brechin gift was announced today by SU Senior Vice President for Institutional Advancement Thomas J. Walsh.

“Chancellor Cantor and Dr. Brechin have displayed remarkable leadership with the generosity and magnitude of their gift to the University,” Walsh says. “They have structured this planned gift in a manner consistent with many of our top donors, meaning that it includes a combination of outright, lifetime and deferred gift components that will help to sustain programs of importance to them in the years ahead. In fact, this gift is one of the largest ever made by an SU Chancellor to the University.”

“Steve and I have spent our careers as academics and never thought we could make a commitment of this magnitude,” says Cantor. “However, we were able to assemble our gift in a way that made it both achievable and gratifying with the knowledge that programs we care so much about will benefit as a result.”

Cantor and Brechin’s gift will support their areas of academic appointments, programs to which they have a longstanding personal or professional connection, or that have been an important part of their family life during their time at SU.

“As we thought through this process, Nancy and I wanted to make a difference in those programs that have meant so much to both of us and to our children during our time here at Syracuse,” Brechin says. “We feel very good about being able to assist so many programs through this gift.”

Their gift will support the following areas and programs in which they are involved: the Department of Psychology; the Women’s Studies Program; the Department of Sociology; the Center for Environmental Policy and Administration; the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs; the Community Folk Art Center; the School of Architecture’s Urban Design initiatives; the College of Visual and Performing Arts Creative Campus initiatives (including dance); Women’s Athletics; the Intergroup Dialogue Program; the Lillian & Emanuel Slutzker Center for International Services; and the School of Education’s initiatives in Disabilities Studies.

“The combination of their commitment to our students, faculty and staff, and their confidence in the University will provide significant momentum as we publicly launch The Campaign for Syracuse University on campus, in the region and around the world,” says John Couri, chairman of the SU Board of Trustees.