Chatfield College Receives $1 million Gift

Chatfield College in Cincinnati and St. Martin, Ohio received $1 million from the late  Dr. Mary Lois Jung, its largest gift ever.

Jung, was a surgeon, Catholic nun and dedicated philanthropist who valued providing educational opportunities to those in need.

When she died last fall, she made sure someone would be able to go to college who couldn’t afford it.

Jung’s bequeathed gift will create Chatfield’s largest endowed scholarship, which is one of 25 funded scholarships available to Chatfield students.

“She saw an institution that reached out to people who were at a turning point in their lives and needed help,” Jung’s nephew, Joe Conway, said. “She really fell in love with the mission of the school and how committed everyone was.”

Jung grew up in Cincinnati and attended the School of the Brown County Ursulines, which is now Chatfield, but didn’t have a personal connection to the private liberal arts college.

When a scholarship she set up at her alma mater, the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, was merged into Drexel University in 2002, Jung was determined to find a replacement.

“This is a transformational gift for us,” said Kip Heekin, chair of the Chatfield College trustees. “Our mission is to care for people who are underserved and need that extra support and I think that resonated with her.”

The gift comes on the heels of Chatfield’s new campus in Over-The-Rhine, which opened in August 2015.

“We’ve seen such a growth in our student population, so this is exciting from an affordability standpoint,” Heekin said. He said the plan is to invest the funds and create 10 to12 scholarships a year, worth up to $50,000.

The donation wasn’t Jung’s first gift to Chatfield.

In 2001, she gave Chatfield College $750,000, which endowed the salary of the first full-time science teacher at the St. Martin campus in Brownt County.  It was the college’s largest gift at that time and created the school’s first endowed chair.

Article can be found on cincinnati.com