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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowThe Indiana University Maurer School of Law announced gifts of $3.25 million to establish an endowed clinical professorship and provide scholarship funds for Indiana high school graduates attending the law school.
Glenn Scolnik, a 1978 graduate of the law school, and his wife, Donna, made a $2 million gift to establish the Glenn and Donna Scolnik Clinical Chair, to be held by the director of the Conservation Law Center. It’s the first endowed chair for an IU clinical law professor.
Led by professor W. William Weeks, a 1979 law school alum, the Conservation Law Center provides legal counsel without charge to conservation organizations, works to improve conservation law and policy, and offers law students clinical experience in the practice of conservation law.
Scolnik is chairman of Hammond, Kennedy, Whitney & Company Inc., a private capital firm based in Indianapolis. He has served on the Conservation Law Center’s board of directors since 2006 and recently completed a term as president of the law school’s board of visitors. Scolnik is a member of the law school’s Academy of Law Alumni Fellows.
Separately, Kathleen Harrold has given $1.25 million to endow the Bernard Harrold Endowed Scholarship, which will provide full tuition to a third-year law student each year. The scholarship will be awarded to an Indiana-resident student with demonstrated financial need who is in the top 25 percent of the class. The gift supplements a previous $300,000 gift that will be used for annual scholarship awards until the funds are depleted.
The scholarship honors Kathleen Harrold’s late husband, Bernard E. “Bernie” Harrold, LLB 1951, a founding partner of the Chicago firm Wildman, Harrold, Allen & Dixon (now Edwards Wildman Palmer LLP). Bernie Harrold was a distinguished medical malpractice defense lawyer and mentor to young lawyers throughout his career, many of whom graduated from the Maurer School of Law. He was also a veteran of World War II, serving in the U.S. Army Antitank Company, 333rd Infantry Regiment, 84th Division, known as the Railsplitters Division because its members hailed primarily from the Lincoln states: Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky. Harrold was a member of the law school’s Academy of Law Alumni Fellows.
“We are honored and delighted by these generous gifts,” said Austen L. Parrish, dean of the law school and the James H. Rudy professor of law. “The center not only provides our students a tremendous up-close view of what it’s like to practice law, but also shows how public service is an important part of a professional career. The Scolnik Chair will be instrumental in allowing the Conservation Law Center to continue this important work.”
Parrish noted more than 90 percent of the Maurer students receive scholarships, with an average annual grant of nearly $25,000.
“Gifts such as Mrs. Harrold’s help us make an outstanding legal education affordable to our students, and we are deeply grateful,” he said. “As a result of recent alumni generosity, the cost of attending the law school has been reduced.” Parrish said the average debt for the class of 2014 was approximately 14 percent below that of the prior year’s class.
Parrish said the school’s annual fund, the Fund for Excellence, received $1.2 million in unrestricted gifts for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2014, the highest in five years and a 23 percent increase since 2010. Faculty gifts to the Fund for Excellence in 2014 reached an all-time high of 55 percent.
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