A major gift to UNC's College of Arts and Sciences will enable creative writing students to study with some of the nation’s most notable writers.
Made on July 1, the first day of Chancellor Holden Thorp’s administration, the gift from Sallie Shuping-Russell of Chapel Hill will fund an innovative new course featuring the work of active writers who will hold a distinguished visiting professorship within the Creative Writing Program. The program is part of the Department of English and Comparative Literature in the College.
The $666,000 gift qualifies for a $334,000 grant from the North Carolina Distinguished Professors Endowment Trust, bringing its total value to $1 million. The state fund, established in 1985 by the N.C. General Assembly, provides matching grants to recruit and retain outstanding faculty.
The gift will create the Sallie Shuping-Russell Distinguished Visiting Professorship. Starting in the fall of 2009, five to six outstanding writers will come to campus to participate in the regularly scheduled course, “Living Writers,” which will honor her mother, Margaret R. Shuping, who graduated from UNC in 1944 with a degree in journalism. The visiting professors also will give public readings for the University community.
“My career has been spent financing new technologies,” Shuping-Russell said. “However, as science rolls forward, I want to make sure we don’t lose sight of the human experience of dealing with life in these times. That is what literature does best. With this professorship, I hope to inspire the next generation of writers to embrace that purpose.”
Shuping-Russell, managing director at the investment firm BlackRock in New York, N.Y., is a member of the UNC Board of Trustees, the UNC Foundation Investment Fund Co. Board of Directors and a former member of the Board of Directors of UNC Health Care. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English and political science at Carolina in 1977 and holds a master’s in business administration from Columbia University.
“This gift gets my job as chancellor off to a great start, and I’ll always feel a special gratitude to Sallie,” said Thorp, former dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. “The rigorous program and intimate engagement with faculty in creative writing embody the commitments to originality and undergraduate experience that define Carolina. Sallie’s gift shows not only her extraordinary generosity, but also her understanding of our deepest values.”
The “Living Writers” course will be the Creative Writing Program’s first and only semester-length class arranged entirely around a series of visiting writers and their works, making it “a model for the study and practice of contemporary literature,” said Michael McFee, director of creative writing at Carolina.
“This kind of close contact with authors, especially when students are familiar with their work, gives young writers the chance to have extended conversations with those practicing the art and craft to which they aspire,” McFee said.
The course also will further UNC’s overall mission to give students a liberal arts education, Shuping-Russell said.
“The Creative Writing Program at Carolina is unique in its focus within undergraduate studies,” she said. “It allows the University to be a leader in interpreting the human condition as other parts of the institution unfold the genetic structure of our being.
“With today’s rapid scientific discovery, our literary capacity has to maintain its pace. It is my hope that this gift will help secure this important mission for Carolina.”
Shuping-Russell’s gift builds on several other privately funded programs in creative writing at Carolina. These include the Thomas Wolfe Scholarship, the Blanche Britt Armfield Poetry Series, the Morgan Writer-in-Residence Program, the Doris Betts Distinguished Professorship and other resources that have enabled the Creative Writing Program to bring a wide range of writers to campus to interact with undergraduate students and the community.
“We in creative writing are extraordinarily grateful to Sallie Shuping-Russell,” McFee said. “This is a terrific opportunity for us and for Carolina.”
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