>newground
At the piano: Louise McNutt (right) with her mother Kathleen McNutt
Ask any top graduate student: When choosing a graduate school, nothing affects your decision more than a fellowship.
Its advantages are immense. It relieves you of a financial burden, gives you a vote of confidence from the program you are entering, and boosts your standing among prospective employers in a competitive job market.
This year the College of Arts and Sciences received a rare gift from the estate of Louise McNutt: $2.12 million to fund a new fellowship program in the humanities. The gift will create an endowment that will provide tuition and living expenses for 10-15 new graduate students each year.
“The gift,” as Bloomington Chancellor Ken Gros Louis remarks, “is of major significance. Fellowships in the humanities are hard to come by, particularly with the National Endowment for the Humanities funding cuts.” Moreover, a matching program from Gros Louis’ office will match the interest income from the endowment, “essentially doubling the value of the gift.”
As Dean Kumble Subbaswamy of the College of Arts and Sciences explains, “The gift will benefit generations of graduate students. It will also benefit the quality of education at IU. Graduate education lies at the core of the intellectual and academic life of every great research university. This gift will allow us to compete with other institutions to bring the very best graduate students in the humanities to IU.”
The McNutt Legacy
Louise McNutt lived a life close to people and places in the spotlight of history. Perhaps this explains why she would leave much of her legacy to those most eager to unravel its meaning. “She loved history,” her cousin John Krauss explains. “She was especially interested in the lessons it had to offer and how it might help us in the present.”
When Louise was a child, her father Paul McNutt’s career took the family from Bloomington, where he was dean of the IU Law School, to the Indiana governor’s mansion, where he presided from 1933-1937, to the Philippines, where he served as high commissioner and later as the first U.S. ambassador. He also served as chairman of the War Manpower Commission during World War II in the Roosevelt administration. In 1940 he sought the nomination for president.
Louise herself had a long, productive career. She spent 43 years working for the U.S. Department of State, beginning as a translator for the activities that led to the opening of the United Nations. She became the U.N. adviser in the Bureau of Far Eastern Affairs and retired in 1987.
While her interests ranged far and wide, Louise’s allegiance to Indiana University was strong. Her friendship with Herman B Wells helped to sustain that connection. Prior to this gift, she funded a lectureship and professorships in East Asian studies and history.
Louise McNutt (1921-2000) had a passion for learning and ties to IU that go back more than a century. Both her father and grandfather were alumni. She herself attended IU for a short time before her family moved to the Philippines.
With this endowment, what began over a century ago will last forever. That’s history.
>Liz Rosdeitcher
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