Marquette Receives Largest Individual Donation in University's History

     $18 Million Gift to be used for Teaching and Research Initiatives

Released: 5/11/04

Marquette 's teaching and research initiatives are receiving an unprecedented boost from the largest individual gift the university has ever received. The donation, in excess of $18 million, will help establish a faculty development fund that will support scholarly research at Marquette . The gift comes at a time when the university is making significant efforts to increase research funding.

The gift is from the estate of Helen Way Klingler, who passed away on January 4, 2004 at the age of 101. She was a resident of Shorewood. Since 1979, Klingler anonymously donated more than $15 million to Marquette , much of which helped fund the university's Campus Circle neighborhood revitalization program as well as construction of the new state-of-the-art Raynor Library. Having now donated approximately $33 million to Marquette , Helen Way Klingler is the university's all-time largest individual donor.

“Helen Klingler has been amazingly generous to Marquette and we are most grateful” says Rev. Robert Wild, S.J., President of Marquette University. “ The best way to thank her will be to use her wondrously generous gift, not only to carry out the purposes she had in mind, but to do so with such excellence that her name will continued to be honored on this campus, as indeed it should be.”

The Way-Klingler Faculty Development Fund
$15 million of the gift will be used to establish a competitive faculty development fund that will help support scholarly research at Marquette on an annual basis. Some examples of awards will include:

• Two fully-funded one year sabbaticals for select faculty members, which allow them to fully focus on advancing scholarship
• $30,000 faculty research award for a junior faculty member
• $100,000 faculty fellowship award for a senior faculty member

Helen Way Klingler had no formal connection to Marquette (never attended). However, she was good friends with Fr. John Raynor (former Marquette President) and converted to Catholicism at the St. Joan of Arc Chapel on Marquette 's campus. Klingler was the daughter of Sylvester B. Way , the longtime head of Wisconsin Electric. When asked in 1989 why she gave to Marquette , she replied, "Because I never had a child, and I wanted to do something for those kids."