The Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) announced the recipients of its 2016
awards on January 6 during the annual Presidents Institute in Miami Beach,
Florida. CIC presented the Award for Philanthropy (Organization) to The Corella and Bertram F. Bonner
Foundation and the Award for Philanthropy (Individuals) to O. Jay and Patricia Tomson. The
Allen P. Splete Award for Outstanding Service was presented to W. Robert
Connor.
Chris Kimball, chair of the CIC Board of
Directors and president of California Lutheran University, and Richard Ekman,
president of CIC, presented the awards.
During his introduction, Ekman said,
“These awards are an important way for CIC presidents to celebrate and honor
organizations and individuals who have contributed generously to independent
higher education—through their professional expertise, philanthropic generosity,
or both. CIC is extremely pleased to have the opportunity to recognize the
individuals and organizations who stand as role models for philanthropists and
college trustees everywhere and who have strengthened independent higher
education and provided opportunities and access for students.”
The 2016 Awards for Philanthropy
celebrate individuals and organizations who demonstrate the love of humankind
through consequential giving and who provide an example of the philanthropic
spirit. In announcing the 2016 Award for Philanthropy (Organization) to
The Corella and Bertram F. Bonner Foundation, President Kimball
said, “The award celebrates a foundation whose support of private colleges and
universities and CIC has demonstrated leadership and vision and has,
consequently, made a significant difference in the vitality of independent
higher education.” The foundation also is being honored, Kimball said, because
it “seeks to improve the lives of individuals and communities by helping to meet
basic nutritional and educational opportunity needs through long-term
partnerships with both colleges and congregations.”
The foundation launched its flagship education program, the Bonner Scholars
Program, in 1990 in partnership with Berea College in Kentucky. Originally
designed to provide students with “access to education and an opportunity to
serve,” the Scholars Program has expanded to become the largest
privately-funded, service-based college scholarship program in the nation.
The Bonner Scholars Program provides four years of support and the
opportunity to take part in an intensive cohort experience to students with high
financial need and a strong service ethic. Today, the Bonner Foundation helps
other campuses replicate the Bonner Scholars Program model using such resources
as the Federal Work Study Program. The Bonner program successfully contributes
to the enrollment and graduation of diverse student populations, including
low-income and first-generation students. More than 60 campuses, including more
than 40 CIC members, currently host Bonner programs, engaging nearly 3,000
students each year.
Accepting the award on behalf of the foundation was Robert Hackett,
president of the Bonner Foundation since 2010. He joined the foundation in 1992
as vice president and director of the Bonner Scholars Program.
In presenting the Award for Philanthropy (Individual) to O. Jay and
Patricia Tomson, President Kimball said, “Three colleges—Wartburg
College, Luther College, and St. Olaf College—have benefited significantly from
the generous personal gifts and extensive volunteer services of O. Jay and
Patricia Tomson.”
O. Jay Tomson, who served as a member of the Wartburg Board of Regents and
is past president of the Independent Bankers Association of America, was
instrumental in creating Wartburg’s James A. Leach Chair in Banking and Monetary
Economics. Patricia Tomson’s career in social work prompted the couple’s
challenge grant to create the O. Jay and Patricia Tomson Professorship in Social
Work. In 2009, they established the Tomson Social Work Student-Faculty Research
Fund to provide summer experiential learning opportunities for social work
students.
In addition, the Tomsons have generously supported their alma mater, St.
Olaf College, for more than 50 years. Their largest single gift, a commitment
announced in 2009, has funded the renovation of St. Olaf’s old science building
into a new home for the education and foreign language departments. And Luther
College’s Tomson Family Faculty Fellowships, funded by donations from the
Tomsons and their bank, benefit faculty members in music, accounting,
mathematics, and business/economics.
CIC honored W. Robert Connor with the 2016 Allen P. Splete
Award for Outstanding Service for devoting his career to “working actively on
behalf of higher education and liberal arts colleges.”
Connor was president of the Teagle Foundation from 2003 to 2009 and now
serves as its senior advisor. Before assuming leadership of the Teagle
Foundation, Connor was president and director of the National Humanities Center,
which he transformed from a “quiet island of scholarship” into a powerful force
for intellectual inquiry in the humanities. During his tenure, the center became
a national focus for the best work in the liberal arts, encouraging excellence
in scholarship to strengthen the liberal arts and recognizing the importance of
the humanities in American life.
At Teagle, Connor both reaffirmed the foundation’s commitment to higher
education and refocused its mission to improve student learning in the liberal
arts and sciences. He oversaw the awarding of grant initiatives designed to take
student learning to a higher level. Significantly, Connor partnered with CIC and
individual institutions to advocate for the independence of private higher
education institutions to assess the results of their own educational programs.
From 2004 to 2013, he provided both financial and personal support for CIC’s
work with a consortium of as many as 47 colleges and universities using the
Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) instrument to learn more about the
cognitive growth of students. The CLA is one of the first “value-added” measures
that can reliably compare institutional contributions to student learning.