The Honors College at Wichita State University will be named the Dorothy and Bill Cohen Honors College in recognition of a gift of $4.75 million from the longtime WSU supporters to help develop some of the university's highest-achieving students.

An additional contribution of $250,000 will be used to create the Dorothy and Bill Cohen Fund for University Libraries.

The donation is one of the largest ever made to the WSU Foundation by individuals. It also meets a major university priority to enhance the ability of the Honors College to serve students.

The $4.75 million gift will be targeted at students, faculty and programming in this way:

• $2.25 million will endow the Dorothy and Bill Cohen Honors College Enhancement Scholarship, which will help students pay for activities and experiences aimed at developing their full potential. Those enhancements might include study abroad, undergraduate research, internships in the public sector and attending national conferences.
• $1.5 million will endow the Dorothy and Bill Cohen Honors College Faculty Fellows, who are faculty members released from their departmental duties for a semester to design and teach classes in one of the Honors tracks of leadership, creativity or law and social policy.
• $1 million will endow the Dorothy and Bill Cohen Honors College Leadership Academy, an annual program that will be developed to support student leadership through academic coursework and community mentorship.

“This is a defining gift,” Kimberly Engber, Honors College dean, said. “It communicates a strong commitment to academic rigor and to work that matters to WSU students and faculty. It will allow students to engage with the Wichita community and the world regardless of financial need, to take unpaid internships in the public sector, to travel to represent WSU nationally and internationally, and to collaborate with faculty mentors from multiple disciplines.”

The Dorothy and Bill Cohen Fund for University Libraries will provide funds each year to help cover a wide variety of costs, including digitization, e-books, hiring graduate assistants and purchasing equipment.

"University Libraries has a strong partnership with the Honors College that has helped to increase the quality and caliber of the work Honors students perform,” said Don Gilstrap, dean of University Libraries. 

In 2013, Wichita State revitalized its 55-year-old Honors Program into an Honors College with a permanent home in Shocker Hall. Enrollment increased to 413 students in 2014, up from 267 in 2013. This year, the program became the only degree-granting Honors College in the region and one of the few in the nation by creating an Honors Baccalaureate, an interdisciplinary degree requiring students to develop a plan of study and work closely with faculty to complete a thesis or final project.

“It is truly a pleasure to work with visionary donors like Dorothy and Bill Cohen,” said Elizabeth King, WSU Foundation president and CEO. “They have the insight and the forethought to know what kind of impact their support can make on our broader society when they invest in intelligent, committed and socially aware young people.”