Late alumna donates $3.4 million

The estate of IU alumna Patricia K. Fehl will donate about $3.4 million to IU’s School of Public Health and to the School of Education.

The two schools will split the gift evenly, and the donation will fund new education programs and student recruitment in each of the schools.

“It couldn’t have happened at a better time,” said Mohammad Torabi, School of Public Health dean. “We are very fortunate.”

Since 2012, the School of Public Health has been a newly established institution on the Bloomington campus and is planning on using Fehl’s gift to build new infrastructures for advancing research, creating new scholarships and fellowships for recruiting students, and generating external funding for recruiting and retaining faculty.

Currently, the School of Public Health is in the process of transferring the donation gift to an IU endowment fund, which will then be invested.

“We estimate that the proceeds of the endowment will begin benefiting students within a year or less,” said Charles Rondot, director of marketing and communications for the
School of Public Health.

The School of Education is dedicating the donation particularly toward graduate students in the form of graduate fellowships.

The plan is to create an endowment, and the proceeds will go toward recruiting the top graduate students in the country, said Gerardo Gonzalez, dean of IU’s School of
Education.

“One of the most difficult things to generate is money for graduate fellowships,” Gonzalez said. “And I feel very fortunate that Dr. Fehl made this kind of gift and left it up for us to decide how we could use it best.”

The Dean’s Fellowship Fund will provide graduate students with greater opportunities and financial support. It will take action immediately and will begin rewarding graduates in the incoming class in fall 2014.

Fehl received both her master’s and doctoral degrees from IU.

She was dedicated to education and health and served on the faculty and as the department chair at West Virginia University’s College of Physical Activity and Sports Sciences until her retirement in 1990, Gonzalez said.

“Her life’s work was in physical education and recreation,” Gonzalez said. “I think she followed her passion, and she obviously recognized that her School of Education experience made a great difference in her life and her ability to succeed, so she split the gift for the two areas she cared deeply about.”

Fehl also donated to West Virginia University’s College of Physical Activity and Sport Sciences.  

Fehl was a member of the Hall of Fame at the college’s school of physical education.
She also received an appointment in 1986 to the U.S. President’s Commission on American Outdoors Review of Land Resources, was the president of the American Association for Leisure and Recreation, and was on the editorial board for Leisure Today.

“Dr. Fehl’s donation was a very pleasant surprise,” Rondot said.

Fehl’s donations to both schools will maintain and continue the distinguished programs in both the School of Education and the School of Public Health.

“Her investment in quality will ensure that we will be able to maintain that quality,” Gonzalez said, “and over time people who benefit from that will go on to have a major impact in their own chosen fields, and they will know their support was made possible
by Dr. Fehl’s gift.”

Follow reporter Kylie Ayal on Twitter @kylieayal.