Niagara University’s $10M gift gives new name to business school | Business Local
Jeff and Mary Helen Holzschuh stood prior to a crowd at Niagara College on Wednesday as a prosperous few who gave their alma mater $10 million – a person of the major gifts in the university’s 166-calendar year historical past, earning their title on its business enterprise college.
But when it arrived time to speak, Jeff Holzschuh choked up imagining of the younger couple they were 40 many years in the past, whose scholarships to attend Niagara created his career in finance and hers in nursing feasible.
“We’ve been really lucky to be able to give back,” Holzschuh reported by tears as the university committed the freshly christened Holzschuh College of Business Administration. “Our aim has a few targets, but quantity a person is offering a complete bunch of college students the means to come here like we did, and they likely need some assistance.”
Other than offering the company college a name, their gift will deliver 5 organization and 5 nursing scholarships every single calendar year, stated Niagara University President Rev. James Maher.
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“The notion is to recruit learners who are academically attuned and have need to have,” Maher stated. “So this will be encouraging doing work poor and center course students have the opportunity to examine here.”
Niagara University unveils a signal renaming its Higher education of Enterprise Administration as the Holzschuh Higher education of Organization Administration pursuing a gift by Jeff and Mary Helen Holzschuh who have pledged a reward of $10 million, the most significant alumni donation in the background of the college, Wednesday, Might 4, 2022. University President Father James Maher, speaks, on still left and Jeff and Mary Helen Holzschuh on ideal.
Sharon Cantillon
A part of the reward also will aid aid the men’s and women’s basketball teams, mainly because Jeff Holzschuh acquired his business enterprise diploma on a basketball scholarship.
And the couple’s third aim, he claimed, “is we hope to inspire a bunch of people today to assistance us and maintain this likely for the subsequent 50 or 100 decades.”
Mark Frascatore, dean of the business college or university, said the reward comes right after a several of yrs of strife. 4 decades in the past, New York point out adopted the Excelsior Scholarship that tends to make it feasible for students to show up at SUNY colleges tuition-cost-free, which posed massive recruiting issues for non-public faculties these as Niagara, he stated.
The college was creating strides in recruiting when the pandemic hit in 2019, forcing colleges to shift classes on the net. In July 2021, as points were easing up, large rain prompted extreme flooding that broken Bisgrove Hall, the physical household of the business enterprise school, necessitating key repairs.
“Today, purposes and deposits for drop 2022 are up, portending a fantastic class of incoming freshmen,” Frascatore stated, “And with this generous reward from the Holzschuhs, we all over again have a feeling of optimism, of assure and new beginnings.”
Maher explained Jeff and Mary Helen Holzschuh as “students from true, humble family members who worked challenging to transform their life.”
Jeffrey Holzschuh, a Rochester native, reported the university’s modest measurement and sense of community authorized him to fulfill its trustees, together with the late Dick Chapdelaine, who helped him get his very first occupation on Wall Road at Morgan Stanley. Almost 39 a long time afterwards, he is nonetheless with the organization as chair of its institutional securities division. “That labored out very well,” he deadpanned.
The previous Mary Helen Mahoney earned her nursing diploma at Niagara and went on to perform as a nurse at Potent Memorial Hospital in Rochester and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center before taking time to raise a household in their residence of Greenwich, Conn.
The Holzschuhs have been solid supporters of their alma mater – equally were awarded Niagara’s Medial of Honor in 2017 for their results and service – and give funds to a lot of triggers. But they have never manufactured a gift of this dimension right up until now, Jeff Holzschuh explained. It is the largest alumni reward in Niagara heritage and, with their preceding donations, make the few the university’s major benefactors.
Holzschuh said he and his wife want to fork out it ahead simply for the reason that they are grateful. The signal that the university unveiled Wednesday consists of a photo of them and a quote from St. Vincent DePaul: “We really should spend as a great deal time in thanking God for his gains as we do in asking Him for them,” it explained.
Holzschuh also joked about their title (pronounced “Hole-shoe”) now gracing the small business university.
“I apologize for the point that the staff members, school and all people else is heading to have to understand how to spell it” he stated.