Major gifts

We are honored and grateful to have been the recipients of a number of major gifts over the years. We are happy to acknowledge those gifts here.

(1) The Morris family, especially Mrs. Edie Morris, along with friends, family and colleagues, set up an endowed fund in honor of Prof. Bertram Morris, who was a professor of philosophy in our department from 1947 to 1977. For more on Prof. Bertram and Mrs. Edie Morris, go to the Morris Reading Room page. The Morris fund is used to host an annual colloquium, which focuses on topics that were of particular interest to Prof. Morris, including social and political philosophy, applied ethics, aesthetics, and other topics in philosophy. .

(2) The Reinhardt family has generously endowed a fund to sponsor the William Reinhardt Memorial Lecture, in honor of Professor William Reinhardt, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Colorado from 1967 until his death in 1998. The Reinhardt Lecture, which is co-sponsored by the Reinhardt Fund and the Department of Philosophy, brings a leading contemporary philosopher of mathematics to Boulder to give a talk on topics of particular interest to Professor Reinhardt, including set theory, logic, or the foundations of mathematics. For more information, see the Reinhardt Lecture page.

(3) The Wille family is the generous sponsor of the Wille Fellowship, which is awarded competitively to academically outstanding MA students to support their philosophical studies. We are tremendously honored to be the recipient of this funding. Past and current recipients of this fellowship include:

  • Tucker Marks (2014-15)
  • Jules Guidry (2015-16)
  • La’Ron Latin (2016-17)
  • Alexandra Laird (2017-2018)
  • Roger Connaroe (Fall 2018)
  • Abigail Perrott (Spring 2019)
  • Jacob Hartman (2019-20)
  • Quinn Hermon (2019-20)
  • Richard Fyfe (2019-20)
  • Colton Kunzeman (Fall 2021)
  • Stephen Troy (Spring 2022)
  • Anthony Sharra (Fall 2022)

(4) The Stahl Prize is given in memory of Professor Gary Stahl, who taught at CU from 1962 to 1996. It recognizes a graduate student who has made a significant contribution toward bringing the discipline of philosophy to bear on some demanding and crucial human problem.

Gary Stahl was a much beloved philosophy professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder and a lifelong community activist and leader in Boulder for 35 years. He was born in Trenton, N.J., was educated at Williams College, and went on to receive a master’s degree from Brown University, and a doctorate in philosophy from Columbia University. He was the author of Human Transactions: The Emergence of Meaning in Time (Temple University Press 1995), and the author of numerous papers in areas including aesthetics, Aristotle’s ethics, J.S. Mill, and Kant.  He served on numerous boards of organizations committed to peace and conflict resolution. In 1988, he was awarded the Thomas Jefferson Award from the University of Colorado for his scholarship, teaching and writing, reflecting broad interests in literature, arts and sciences, and public affairs; a strong concern for the advancement of individual civic responsibility, and a profound commitment to the welfare and rights of the individual. In 1998, he was awarded the Boulder Daily Camera’s Pacesetter Award for his significant contributions to the area of the health and medicine.

A generous tribute to Prof. Stahl was given in the Dewey Lecture at the American Philosophical Association given in 2013 by the distinguished philosopher of science, Prof. Elisabeth Lloyd, graduate of our undergraduate program in 1980.

Past recipients of the Stahl Prize include:

  • Robert Figueroa (1998)
  • Shelley Wilcox (2001)
  • Teresa Weynand-Tobin (2005)
  • Scott Wisor (2006, 2007)
  • Corwin Aragon (2006)
  • Gustavo Oliveira (2008, 2009)
  • David Meens (2010)
  • Martín Chamorro (2011)
  • Annaleigh Curtis (2013)
  • Spencer Case (2015)
  • Cheryl Abbate (2016)
  • Mark Boespflug (2017)

(5) An anonymous donor has generously given $10,000 each year to support our graduate students in the form of a Summer Research Assistantship, which they use in combination with work study, to do research under the supervision of a faculty member.

(6) An anonymous donor in Oregon has given the department significant amounts yearly for several years.

(7) The Think! Talk series is a lecture series devoted to topics intended to be of interest to a wider audience. It is funded by a generous donation by an anonymous donor.

(8) The Morris Reading Room was named in honor of Prof. Morris, and houses the Philosophy Department library collection, which was established with the generous contributions of many emeriti faculty members, including William Reinhardt, David Hawkins, Leonard Boonin, Forrest Williams, Gary Stahl, Bertram Morris, Michael Zimmerman, and John Fisher, as well as former faculty members including Eric Chwang and Bradley Monton. David Robb has generously donated books to the library. You can read more about the Morris Reading Room collection and library here.

(9) The Jentzsch Prize is given in memory of Gus Jentzsch, who was a PhD student in philosophy at CU in the late 1960s and died young of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. He was regarded by the faculty as a superb and gifted philosopher. Jentzsch chose to spend his last summer doing philosophy with his advisor Prof. Jim Kimble rather than go on holiday with his girlfriend. After he died, friends and faculty members endowed a fund to honor his memory. Every spring we have a contest with submissions by graduate students, and the winner is given the Jentzsch prize for best graduate student paper of the year. It is meant to recognize sound scholarship and original thinking in philosophy. 

(10) The Margot and Lawson Crowe Endowed Graduate Student Success Fund for the Department of Philosophy.

The Philosophy Department is extremely grateful to Mrs. Margot Crowe for a generous legacy gift she made in 2017 in the name of her late husband, Prof. Charles Lawson Crowe (1928-2013), who was a professor in the Philosophy Department from 1967-1993. He received a BA from Duke University (Trinity College) in 1950, and served with the United States Army in Germany from 1951-1953. Upon his return, he was accepted for a combined degree from Union Seminary and Columbia University where he received his PhD in Philosophy of Religion. From 1955-56, he was Assistant Director of Graduate Admissions at Columbia University, and later taught philosophy and ethics at Sweet Briar College from 1956 -1964. While at Sweet Briar, he initiated the integration of Sweet Briar College. Civil Rights, ethics and values became a central part of his professional life. He finished his Ph.D. in 1961. From 1964-1967, he became National Representative and Director, Dissertation Fellowship Program, Woodrow Wilson Foundation, Princeton, NJ. While speaking at a Graduate Dean's conference in 1967, he was invited to come to the University of Colorado, Boulder as Associate Dean of the Graduate School. From there he became Dean of the Graduate School, the first to hold the position of Provost, Vice President for Research. In 1974 he was appointed the first Chancellor of the Boulder Campus, University of Colorado from 1974 - 1976. During those years, Dr. Crowe had an appointment in the Philosophy Department as Associate Professor 1967-1971 and Professor of Philosophy 1971-1993. He was survived by his two sons from his first marriage, Thad and Glenn, as well as his wife Mrs. Margot Crowe.

Crowe bequest commitee

From the left: James White, Margot Crowe, Robert Shay, Timothy Orr, and Deb Coffin

Mrs. Crowe is herself an alumna of CU Boulder (1963-1967), and has given years of service to the University through an extensive list of volunteer roles. Notable among these is her service as President of the CU Retired Faculty and Staff Association; her membership on the Colorado Shakespeare Festival Advisory Board and on the College of Music Adopt-A-Student Committee; and her service to the Colorado Shakespeare Festival Gardens.

Dr. Lawson Crowe dedicated many years of his life and service to the Philosophy Department and to the University of Colorado, and it was in acknowledgement of his commitment to philosophy and to the welfare of philosophy graduate students that Mrs. Crowe made this gift to us. Mrs. Crowe is a strong and passionate supporter not only of philosophy, but also classics, music, and the performing arts on campus, and we are enormously grateful to her for her gift and for her continuing support of the arts, humanities, and higher education. Her gift will be used to support Philosophy graduate student education and research, by supporting a host of crucial graduate student professional development activities, including dissertation writing, research support, and travel to conferences.

(11) The Philosophy Department is thrilled to announce the establishment of the Paduano Family Endowed Scholarship Fund. We are enormously grateful to John Philip Paduano (’04 BA, Philosophy with distinction, CU Boulder) and Brooke Larson Carleton for establishing this scholarship for philosophy majors in our department.  A $1,100 scholarship will be awarded for the first time in Fall 2020. Recipients will be chosen on the basis of both merit and need; the first recipient will be Charles Doremieux.