Inspired by Students: The Steans Challenge for Scholarships

DePaul University’s president, the Rev. Dennis H. Holtschneider, C.M., said today that the university has received a $1 million challenge grant for scholarships from Harrison Steans, a life trustee and longtime DePaul supporter. He made the announcement during a kick-off celebration and picnic marking the start of the Many Dreams, One Mission Campaign for DePaul University on the school’s Lincoln Park Campus.

The Steans family will match any individual gift up to $10,000, dollar for dollar, made to scholarships during the Steans Challenge for Scholarships, which ends Dec. 31, 2010.

“DePaul students are an inspiring group of young people,” Steans says. “In fact, they are the inspiration for this fundraising campaign. Each comes with his or her own dream and it is the mission of DePaul, as it has been since the university’s founding, to help fulfill those dreams.”

The Many Dreams, One Mission Campaign—the school’s first major campaign in almost 40 years and its largest ever – seeks to raise $250 million by June 30, 2014. Some $100 million of that total will be used to secure support for scholarships, helping to ensure that a college education is available to future generations of talented DePaul students.

“Our students work hard to achieve their dreams as they balance academics, work, and service to the community,” says Mary Dempsey, chair of DePaul’s Board of Trustees and commissioner of the Chicago Public Library. “More than 80 percent work full time while pursuing their degrees, and a similar number rely on financial aid to underwrite their education. We are very grateful to Harrison Steans for this important and impactful gift.”

For more information or to make a gift online, visit campaign.depaul.edu/steanschallenge.

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Law school alumni give $6.5 million to support scholarships, legal clinics at DePaul

Gifts include the university’s largest ever to scholarships

At the request of noted pharmaceutical executive, philanthropist and DePaul University law alumnus Michael Jaharis, the Jaharis Family Foundation Inc. has made a $5 million gift to endow scholarships in the university’s College of Law.

The gift — the largest single gift to scholarships in the university’s 112-year history — comes on the heels of a $1 million gift from alumnus and life trustee John W. Martin Jr. to endow the school’s legal clinics, and a $500,000 gift to endow scholarships from alumnus Larry Rogers Sr., founding partner of the Chicago law firm Power Rogers & Smith.

“Each of these very generous gifts will enable students to realize dreams that otherwise they might not be able to attain,” says the Rev. Dennis H. Holtschneider, C.M., president of DePaul University. “We are grateful for the commitment that these alumni have for DePaul’s mission of providing its unique, world-class legal education to talented students.”

Michael Jaharis
Mr. Jaharis, a Chicago native and son of Greek immigrants, served in the U.S. Army Medical Corps during the Korean War and later attended night school at DePaul University, receiving his law degree there in 1958. After a short stint in private practice, he joined Miles Laboratories as legal counsel and eventually became vice president and general counsel of the pharmaceutical company’s Ethical Drug Division. He had worked for Miles as a salesman while attending DePaul.

In 1972, Mr. Jaharis and a partner acquired Key Pharmaceuticals and turned the tiny producer of cough and cold remedies into a powerhouse with newly developed top-selling asthma and cardiovascular drugs. Under his leadership, Key’s sales increased 100-fold before the company’s $836 million merger with Schering-Plough in 1986.

Two years later Mr. Jaharis launched Kos Pharmaceuticals, which dominated the market with its cholesterol-lowering drug Niaspan before being sold to Abbott Labs in 2006 for $4.2 billion.

Today, he is founder and director of Arisaph Pharmaceuticals Inc., a privately held drug/bio-tech discovery and design company, and a founder of Vatera Capital LLC, a private investment firm focusing on the healthcare industry.

Mr. Jaharis gave the gift as a challenge to encourage other College of Law alumni to give back to the university.

“I feel that my studies at DePaul are what really got me started,” he says. “It is particularly important to me and my family to give back to an institution which truly inspired me and may help open doors for young people who wish to advance their education.”

Mr. Jaharis has served as the lay head of the Greek Orthodox Church in the United States for the past 10 years. A generous philanthropist throughout his career, he and the Jaharis Family Foundation continue to support higher education, arts and religious organizations.

John W. Martin Jr.
John W. Martin Jr. graduated from DePaul’s College of Law in 1961. In 1970, after the better part of a decade with the U.S. Department of Justice and a private New York firm, he joined Ford Motor Co., serving as vice president and general counsel for 10 years before his retirement in 1999.

While at Ford he received the American Bar Association’s Pro Bono Publico Award (1990) and in 1997 was named one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America by the National Law Journal.

In retirement, Mr. Martin continues to provide pro bono legal services to a number of organizations, most recently as an immigration lawyer with Gulfcoast Legal Services, a nonprofit in Sarasota, Fla., where he lives nine months of the year.

“Lawyers have a special obligation to serve the poor, especially in a society as complex and difficult to navigate as ours,” he says. “Clinic work should be an integral part of a lawyer’s training.”

DePaul’s College of Law has nine pro bono legal clinics. Each semester some 70 qualified second- and third-year students provide legal support in more than 100 civil and criminal cases brought by indigent clients.

Larry Rogers Sr.
Attorney Larry Roger Sr. received his law degree from DePaul in 1983 and quickly earned a reputation as a personal injury lawyer to be reckoned with. In 1985, in his first Cook County trial, he won a $27 million judgment in a product liability case – the largest in Illinois history at the time. Since then he has won numerous multimillion-dollar judgments for clients, including a recent $55 million award in a medical malpractice case, the state’s largest judgment for a malpractice case in the past decade.

During his career, Mr. Rogers has served as president of the Cook County Bar Association and the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association, where he was the first African-American to ever hold the post.

He has garnered many awards, including the Richard E. Westbrook Award for legal excellence from the Cook County Bar Association and was named one of the country’s top 10 litigators by National Law Journal in 1999.

Mr. Rogers, who earned his law degree at night while working full time as a respiratory therapist, says that the most important accomplishment of his career has been mentoring young lawyers, many of them African-American.

“Institutions such as DePaul have helped lead the way in opening up the legal profession to a diverse cross section of people—minorities, women and others who have been notoriously underserved in the past,” he says. “There’s still work to do, and that’s why scholarships such as the one I’ve established are important, because economic barriers still remain.”

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DePaul University launches Many Dreams, One Mission Campaign

DePaul University today announced the public launch of its Many Dreams, One Mission Campaign for DePaul University at an outdoor celebration and picnic held on the school’s Lincoln Park Campus.

The Many Dreams, One Mission Campaign — the school’s first comprehensive campaign in almost 40 years and its largest ever — seeks to raise $250 million by June 30, 2014. Some $100 million of that total will be used to secure support for scholarships, helping to ensure that a college education is available to future generations of talented DePaul students.

“More than a century ago, DePaul was founded on a dream — a dream of educational opportunity for all capable students,” said DePaul’s president, the Rev. Dennis H. Holtschneider, C.M., EdD.

“The Vincentian priests and brothers who established DePaul did so at a time when higher education was not available to the great majority of Chicagoans,” he said. “These visionaries looked around and saw a vibrant and growing city — a city’s whose population was more than 70 percent immigrant, a city that needed an educated populace to thrive.”

Today DePaul is the eighth largest private university and the largest Catholic university in the country, he noted, adding that DePaul has remained committed to providing high-quality educational opportunities to all talented students, especially those from Chicago’s underserved populations — first-generation college students; immigrants; women; and racial, ethnic and religious minorities.

“The Many Dreams, One Mission Campaign theme completely embodies what DePaul is all about,” said alumna Mary A. Dempsey, chair of DePaul’s Board of Trustees and commissioner of the Chicago Public Libraries.

“I, too, was a student here,” she said. “My DePaul education set me on a path to an amazing, fulfilling future. Everyone who comes to DePaul brings their own personal dream for their life, and yet each of us is bound together by the Vincentian ideal of serving others, and in doing so shaping the wider world.”

Excellence in education
The remaining $150 million is designated to enhancing academic excellence by building state-of-the-art facilities, hiring and retaining expert faculty, and developing and enhancing cutting-edge academic programs that respond to pressing real-world needs.

Funds raised during the campaign’s “quiet phase,” already have been used to help build DePaul’s new Monsignor Andrew J. McGowan Science Building, which houses the departments of chemistry and environmental science. The environmentally friendly, Gold LEED-certified building opened for classes in January 2009.

The campaign also will raise some $20 million to help fund construction of new performing arts facilities on DePaul’s Lincoln Park Campus. The projects include new buildings for the School of Music and The Theatre School.

When complete, the performing arts buildings not only will provide state-of-the-arts teaching, rehearsal and performance space for DePaul’s two nationally renowned conservatory-style performing arts programs but also establish Lincoln Park as a cultural destination within Chicago.

Off to a roaring start
DePaul’s senior vice president of Advancement, Mary Finger, notes that fundraising during the quiet phase of the campaign has largely defied the lingering recession. The Many Dreams, One Mission Campaign will enter its public phase with more than $160 million, she says, noting that $44 million of the $160 million has already established 197 new, permanent scholarship funds.

“The last four years have been the best fundraising years in DePaul’s history. DePaul’s mission of providing top quality education to students from varied economic backgrounds is one that resonates with our alumni and friends who have stepped up and made generous contributions despite challenging economic times.”

Chicago mayor and DePaul alumnus Richard M. Daley (Liberal Arts & Sciences ’65, Law ’68, LLD ’04) serves as the honorary chair of The Many Dreams, One Mission Campaign for DePaul University. Five university trustees serve as co-chairs:

• Gerald A. Beeson, COO and Sr. Managing Director, Citadel Investment Group (Commerce ’94)
• Frank M. Clark, Chairman and CEO, ComEd (Commerce ’72, Law ’76, LLD ’04)
• Douglas Crocker, Chairman and CIO, Transwestern Multifamily Partners, LLC
• Mary A. Dempsey; Chair of the DePaul University Board of Trustees and Commissioner of the Chicago Public Library (Law ’82)
• William E. Hay, President, William E. Hay & Co. (Commerce MBA ’66, DHL ’06)

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DePaul receives $4.7 million from the U.S. State Department for work in Iraq

The U.S. Department of State awarded a $4.7 million grant to the International Human Rights Law Institute (IHRLI) at DePaul University for its continuing work in Iraq.

2005 election poster in Kurdistan

The award, which is the largest single government grant ever given to the College of Law, will support legal education and human and women’s rights initiatives in Iraq.

“We are pleased to receive this substantial grant to help us continue and expand on programs we’ve already established in Iraq,” says Charles E. Tucker Jr., executive director of IHRLI. “These programs are designed to advance post-conflict rebuilding efforts and fulfill our commitment to help foster a more stable environment in Iraq.”

The grant will be used to help IHRLI move forward with its work to expand educational reform activities to additional Iraqi law schools, improve women’s participation in the Iraqi political process, expand training for nongovernment organizations and foster dialogue, consensus-building and reconciliation after the Iraqi national elections.

IHRLI has worked on human rights and rule of law projects in Iraq since 2004. For the past five years, IHRLI’s work in Iraq has been run by Daniel Rothenberg, managing director of international projects, Kurdistan Daloye, chief of party, and a team of over 50 international and local staff working throughout the country.

“Our long-term goal is to help support Iraq’s democratic transition by institutionalizing political processes that peacefully resolve disputes, strengthen rule-of-law skills and resources, and develop the capacity of civil society organizations, especially those focusing on women’s issues and human rights,” says Tucker.

IHRLI was established by the College of Law in 1990 and designs and implements innovative international programs on capacity building, education, human rights documentation and analysis, post-conflict reconciliation, and gender justice.

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