This time of year, higher education institutions across the country look forward to commencement ceremonies, bidding adieu to graduating seniors as they embark on the next chapter of their lives.
Some institutions are also hoping for “tassel” gifts, large and small, from alumni and friends – including some benefactors who never attended the institution. The common thread is a giver who feels the institution is special and has played a key role in helping the giver or someone else cultivate a productive life.
Such is the case with Drs. Irvin D. Reid and Pamela Trotman Reid, two Howard University alums who last week announced a $1-million endowment for Howard’s Department of Psychology. They met at Howard as students in the 1960s, earned a combined three degrees in psychology from the noted institution, married one another and pursued successful careers in academic education and higher education leadership.
It wasn’t just the money that was so important, said 77-year-old Irvin Reid in discussing the gift from him and his wife to one of the nation’s first most prominent historically Black colleges and universities.
“What will be more enduring is the inspiration,” they hope their gesture gives others, said Reid, who was the first Black president of Wayne State University and served there for 10 years after a stint as president of Montclair State University in New Jersey.
“This is important to say to people you are where you are because of Howard University,” added Reid, now president emeritus of Wayne State. His wife is president emerita of the University of Saint Joseph in Connecticut.
The Reids’ gift to Howard came as the university was completing recognition of its 150th anniversary. The federally supported private institution, based in the nation’s capital not far from Capitol Hill and the White House, was established just after the Civil War by the federal government. The purpose in opening the higher education institution was to help set examples of what would be done to help the freed slaves get more formal educations and eventually use that training to help others learn.
