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March 16, 2001/Adar 21, 5761, Vol. 53, No.24
Professorships bolster ASU's Jewish studies
BARRY COHEN
Community Editor
Two Valley families have taken crucial steps to advance the Jewish Studies Program at Arizona State University, in terms of its national reputation and its role in the Valley.
The newly established Lowe Professorship of Holocaust and Modern Jewish Studies and Schwartz Professorship of Modern Hebrew Literature will enable the program to enlarge its faculty and gain access to vital resources.
Currently, the Jewish studies program has five full-time faculty members. About 10-12 faculty members teach 200-300 students who enroll in program classes during the academic year.
"I wanted to memorialize my husband in some way in perpetuity," said Miriam Lowe, widow of Irving Lowe, who died in December 1999. He had lost half his family in the Holocaust, she explained.
Professor Jack Kugelmass, director of the Jewish Studies Program, is the first recipient of the Lowe professorship, which began in January. It will provide funding for research trips to Poland, New York and Los Angeles, and for book purchases, said Kugelmass, as well as funding research assistants and computer equipment.
"He earned it," said Professor Joel Gereboff, chairman of religious studies at ASU. "His thinking is outstanding, and he is a visionary program builder."
To maintain the professorship, Kugelmass will be evaluated every five years.
The Lowe family will contribute a total of $300,000 to the professorship over the next three years, said Ron Lowe, Irving and Miriam Lowe's son and a resident of Paradise Valley. The elder Lowes' two other children are Diane Bernbaum of Berkeley, Calif., and Rosalin Weinstein of Philadelphia.
When the three-year funding commitment is met, Ron Lowe said, the Jewish studies program, through the Lowe professorship, anticipates hiring an additional faculty member.
The Schwartz professorship, funded for an undisclosed sum at the donor's request, will enable the program to fill an additional faculty position starting in August, Kugelmass said. Dr. Shai Ginsburg has accepted "a generous offer ... including funds to cover research in Israel" to become the Schwartz professor, added Kugelmass.
Ginsburg, a native of Beersheva, Israel, earned his Ph.D. from the Department of Comparable Literature at the University of Michigan.
Ginsburg is "one of the leading young scholars in the field" and emerged as the top choice during interviews, Gereboff said.
The university pays faculty salaries, Kugelmass said. At most major institutions, faculty members compete for research funds. With the Schwartz and Lowe professorships, research funds of $5,000 to $15,000 are guaranteed.
The Schwartz professorship also includes an annual $5,000 book budget.
The gift also will enable the program to invite professors and other experts to give undergraduate seminars on topics suggested by current faculty members.
The Schwartz professorship also will fund student scholarships and an additional Jewish studies course, Kugelmass said. He hopes to attract the best students "to enrich the Jewish life in the community. If students study here, they may stay here."
Naomi Goodell, director of special projects at ASU - speaking on behalf of Sheila Schwartz - said that through the professorship, the Schwartz family hopes to help the ASU Jewish studies program become the "premier educational and cultural resource for the community on an academic level."
She added that the Jewish studies program, through the Schwartz professor, would coordinate with the Jess Schwartz Jewish Community High School, which also has benefited from a Schwartz family gift.
It is anticipated that ASU faculty will give guest lectures and that high school teachers will have the opportunity to take classes at ASU to learn basic Jewish knowledge and to earn master's and doctoral degrees. The high school students may be able to earn advanced placement coursework in conjunction with ASU, and Jewish studies faculty may teach full-length classes at the high school, she said.
Kugelmass hopes that as community awareness of the value of a strong Jewish studies program grows, more families will endow professorships. He said increased endowment not only would attract top faculty, but also would protect salaried positions. "It makes the faculty less open to the whim of the legislature," said Ron Lowe. Once a faculty professorship is endowed, legislators have a difficult time eliminating it from the state budget, he explained.
Miriam Lowe said her husband had a close connection with Arizona State University, particularly with the law school, where he took classes with Professors Paul Bender and David Kader. Throughout his five-decade law career, "he was always intellectually curious," she added.
Kugelmass was also named the 2001 Bernard Choseed Memorial Fellow for the Yivo Institute for Jewish Research, in recognition of the project, "Impressions of a Journey: Yiddish Travel Accounts of Post-War Poland."
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