Hall Family Foundation endows Hall Center directorship


LAWRENCE — A $500,000 gift from the Hall Family Foundation will endow the directorship of the Hall Center for the Humanities at the University of Kansas. This permanently endowed fund will provide support for salary, travel and advancement of the directorship.

“The Hall Family Foundation is pleased to provide this support to a center of excellence at KU,” said Angela Andresen Smart, vice president of the Hall Family Foundation and a member of the Hall Center’s advisory board. “We are proud of the Hall Center and its numerous accomplishments, including bringing global attention to the humanities at KU while hosting the International Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes in Lawrence last year. We thank the center’s staff and Director Victor Bailey for their hard work and dedication to the success of the Hall Center.”

Bailey expressed appreciation for the gift, “Once again, the Hall Family Foundation has shown itself to be a pioneer in support of the humanities at KU,” he said. “I know of no other humanities center where the directorship is endowed. This new gift will ensure the Hall Center continues to attract the caliber of leadership it deserves.”

The Hall Center for the Humanities was named for Joyce and Elizabeth Hall in 1985 in recognition of the foundation’s gifts for humanities professorships and program support.

Recent support from the Hall Family Foundation included a $2.7 million gift in 2013 for a distinguished professorship in the collaborative humanities, a postdoctoral fellowship in digital humanities, a midcareer fellowship in the humanities and support for Hall Center initiatives. 

The Hall Center’s mission is to stimulate and support research in the humanities, arts and social sciences, especially of an interdisciplinary kind, at KU. The center brings together faculty and graduate students with common interests from various disciplines to enable them to build on each other’s ideas and to share their knowledge within the university and with the wider community.

The gift counts toward Far Above: The Campaign for Kansas, the university’s $1.2 billion comprehensive fundraising campaign. Far Above seeks support to educate future leaders, advance medicine, accelerate discovery and drive economic growth to seize the opportunities of the future.

The campaign is managed by KU Endowment, the independent, nonprofit organization serving as the official fundraising and fund-management organization for KU. Founded in 1891, KU Endowment was the first foundation of its kind at a U.S. public university.