Two families’ recent gifts to the Manship School of Mass Communication are among the largest donations ever received by the school, totalling to more than $2 million, the school announced Monday.
The Lamar family, formerly of Lamar Advertising, will donate $1.35 million, and the Manship family, which the school is named after, will gift $1.2 million.
The gifts will provide a recurring stream of funding over a number of years. Only part of the earnings from endowed accounts are spent, said LSU Foundation Senior Director of Communications and Donor Relations Sara Crow.
“This means these donors’ investments will affect the lives of LSU students for generations to come,” Crow said.
The two gifts come amid declining state support for universities in Louisiana and recurring budget shortfalls, highlighting the importance of donations.
While the engineering and business schools receive gifts of this size more often, said Manship Director of Development Sara Courtney, the Manship School rarely sees donations this large.
She said the school will put the donations up for possible matching funds from the Louisiana Board of Regents, although the process is competitive.
“Including the recent gifts, we have 37 total scholarships and fellowships, two of which support post-doctoral fellows and now, six completed chairs,” Courtney said in an email.
Endowed chairs for professors at LSU aim to bring new scholars to the school and are funded by donors and sometimes matching dollars from the state.
Aside from the Lamar family’s previous gift of more than $1 million, the Manship school received one other chair of $1 million or more in the last five years.
“An outside team of experts just described the Manship School as being in the ranks of the country’s strongest mass communication programs,” Manship School Dean Jerry Ceppos said in the release. “These gifts guarantee that we will become even better.”
The Lamars’ donation will add to the stipend of the Lamar Family Visiting Scholars program and create another visiting scholar position for a post-doctoral researcher and teacher, according to the release.
The Manships’ gift will help fund the Douglas Manship Sr.-Dori J. Maynard Chair in Race, Media and Cultural Literacy, according to the release, and the chair holder will teach courses in media diversity and research coverage of racial issues.