Syracuse’s Hendricks Chapel to use $1M donation for “student-opportunity fund”

SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Syracuse University’s Hendricks Chapel will use a $1 million donation to help students having a “financial hardship” and to “ensure access to academic enrichment opportunities that would otherwise be unavailable to them.”

The university will use the funding to launch the Hendricks Chapel student-opportunity fund.

The fund is designed to help cover the financial gap for students “having difficulty covering their basic needs or unanticipated costs, freeing them to better focus on their coursework and maintain their academic progress,” Syracuse said in a release.

The donation is from a Syracuse University alumnus and his wife who “wish to remain anonymous,” the school said.

Hendricks Chapel Dean Brian Konkol said the donation “appears to be the largest single gift ever made to Hendricks Chapel.” The new endowment fund, which Konkol will administer, will complement Syracuse University’s “established network of financial aid and social support.” Categories of support may include food, clothing, emergency travel, emergency health-care expenses, and other nonacademic expenses.

“This extraordinary expression of generosity speaks to the vital and multifaceted role the chapel plays in campus life,” Konkol said. “I am grateful to the donors for this historic gift, for the good that will immediately come out of it, and for the invitation it extends to others to contribute in a way that expands student wellbeing for generations to come. As a student-centered global home for religious, spiritual, moral, and ethical life, we are committed to fostering and supporting an inclusive and accessible campus community of possibility for a richly diverse student body. We are excited to expand our efforts far beyond the physical walls of the chapel, in order to help create and sustain a learning environment where the pursuit of excellence is supported through the expansion of opportunity.”

In addition to meeting basic needs, the new fund will help to defray costs of “out-of-classroom opportunities” for students for whom such programs and enrichment experiences “might otherwise be out of reach.” Those opportunities could include study abroad and unpaid summer internships, Syracuse said.

Hendricks Chapel already offers a pantry with food and personal-care items, in addition to a system of financial loans and grants, “all of which draw visits from an assortment of students each academic year,” per the release.

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com