Harcum College receives $40 million gift, the largest in its history
The gift comes from Louise Strauss, a University of Pennsylvania graduate who served on Harcum’s board from 2009 to 2024 and who died last year following a bout with cancer.
Harcum College, a small, private two-year school in Bryn Mawr, has received $40 million from the estate of a former member of its board of trustees.
It’s the largest single gift in the college’s 110-year history and a big boost to the school, which enrolls fewer than 1,000 students and operates on an annual budget of about $23 million, according to Harcum president Jon Jay DeTemple. The gift is larger than the college’s total endowment, which stands at over $25 million.
“It’s transformational,” DeTemple said. “We need to attract more students. This will help us do that. We need to improve where we are in terms of all our facilities. This will help us do that.”
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The gift comes from Louise Strauss, a University of Pennsylvania graduate who served on Harcum’s board from 2009 to 2024 and died last year following a bout with cancer, DeTemple said.
Strauss previously had established two endowed scholarship funds in memory of her parents, Hilary and Ione A. Strauss, longtime supporters of Harcum. She held various leadership positions on the board, including chairing the development and alumni relations committee.
“Louise Strauss touched countless lives through her service to Harcum,” David Jacobson, chair of the trustees board, said in a statement.
She had followed in the footsteps of her father, Hilary Strauss, who had preceded her on the trustee board, serving for 25 years. Hilary Strauss, who died in 2016, had founded the businesses Ceilings Inc. and Acoustical Associates, both in Norristown.
DeTemple said Hilary Strauss was instrumental in bringing him to Harcum to serve as president in 2007. His relationship with the family blossomed over the years, he said. While large gifts to a college are usually the result of a team effort, this one, he said, he can unabashedly take credit for.
“I have really been close to them all the way,” he said. “They really believed in what we were doing and how we were doing it.”
During a commencement early in his presidency, he gave a shout-out to Ione A. Strauss, Hilary Strauss’ wife, a philanthropist, journalist, and volunteer who died in 2020.
“She sent me a check for $1,000 the next week,” he said.
Multiple times over the years, the family gave gifts of $30,000 or $50,000 for projects, he said.
And when the school needed a half million for its art and design center three years ago, Louise Strauss readily wrote the check, he said.
“‘I’ll give you the money, no strings,’” he said she told him.
She never sought attention for the help, he said. He would ask her each year if she wanted to be honored at the college’s dinner recognizing donors who gave over $50,000, and she said no every time, he said. She routinely showed up at athletic events to cheer on Harcum teams, he said.
Strauss, Harcum said, also was a volunteer for the Philadelphia Jewish Archives Center, the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Kislak Center at Penn’s Van Pelt Library. Penn also was named as a beneficiary in her estate.
Strauss, the Katz Center said in an online tribute to her, was known for “her humble spirit, her sensitivity, her sense of humor.”
“She loved tennis and transatlantic steamers, whose history she avidly collected,” the center said, noting she customized her license plate to reflect her Penn graduating class.
The gift to Harcum will be used for student scholarships and upgrades to the school’s main teaching facility, technology and safety improvements, and renovations to its academic center, DeTemple said.
It comes at a time when many colleges nationally are coping with financial pressures and uncertain state and federal budgets. At one time, Harcum enrolled 1,600 students, but it lost a chunk of that enrollment during the pandemic, he said.
“It’s been real tight every year,” DeTemple said.
The gift will allow the college to help more first-generation college students who also are facing financial pressures, he said.
“The vast majority of our students have need,” he said.