Scripps College in Claremont, California, has received a $1.8 million gift from a London-based alumna to establish the Gabrielle Jungels-Winkler Endowment for Contemporary European Studies.
The gift comes at an opportune time for Scripps, as the College, in partnership with The Claremont Colleges and the University of Southern California, has just received a grant to establish the European Union Center of California. The center will be one of only ten such academic centers in the United States awarded grants from the Delegation of the European Commission in Washington, D.C., for the study and understanding of European issues. Both the endowment of the chair and the Scripps College European Union Center were announced on October 29 at an alumnae dinner in London.
“The ideal,” to quote Ambassador Hugo Paemen, head of the European Commission’s Delegation in the United States, “is that the European Union Centers will be an essential, fortifying link in the chain of transatlantic relations by building better understanding and cooperation among our future leaders.” This remark, says Ms. Jungels-Winkler, was pivotal in her decision to establish the endowment.
The new endowment will establish a professorship in contemporary European studies, a research fund to support the recipient’s research and teaching, and a speaker’s series to bring prominent scholars and Nobel laureates to Claremont.
Scripps College President Nancy Y. Bekavac says this heightened commitment fits exactly into Scripps College’s strategic plan. The gift will provide focus and permanence to Scripps’ teaching of contemporary European studies.
Gabrielle Jungels-Winkler graduated from Scripps College in 1972 after majoring in art history and a year at L’Ècole du Louvre (University of Paris). Of European heritage, Ms. Jungels-Winkler speaks five languages. Her life since graduation has taken her from The Hague to war-torn Angola, Borneo, Bruxelles and now London, where she runs a charitable foundation. She says of her days at Scripps, “The humanities curriculum at Scripps was seminal in giving me the intellectual, ethical and social responsibility, and cultural curiosity that have served me in such good stead all my life. This endowment is a logical continuation of Ellen Browning Scripps’ vision for education and will serve to perpetuate its ethos.”
Ms. Jungels-Winkler is the mother of twins, one a medical doctor, the other a graduate of modern history now serving in the Armed Forces.
Scripps is establishing the European Union Center of California in partnership with The Claremont Colleges and the University of Southern California. The other nine EU centers will be located across the country, including sites at Harvard University, the University of Pittsburgh, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the University of Illinois. Dr. David Andrews, Professor of Politics and International Relations at Scripps, is the center’s director.
Scripps College was founded in 1926 by philanthropist, newspaper publisher, and entrepreneur Ellen Browning Scripps. It was modeled after the Oxford University plan of small, coordinating residential colleges with central university level services and a graduate school. Scripps College is the women’s college of The Claremont Colleges. Its four-year liberal arts curriculum emphasizes interdisciplinary studies in humanities, sciences and fine arts.
Scripps College chooses to remain a largely residential college of fewer than one thousand students, a scale that encourages women to participate actively in their community and to develop a sense of both personal ethics and social responsibility. Scripps cherishes its campus of uncommon beauty, a tribute to the Founder’s vision that the College’s architecture and landscape should reflect and influence both taste and judgment.
Scripps and the six other Claremont Colleges—Claremont McKenna, Harvey Mudd, Pitzer, Pomona, The Claremont Graduate University, and Keck Graduate Institute—are the finest assembly of small, liberal arts colleges in the United States. Located at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains in the City of Claremont, California (population 36,500), 35 miles east of Los Angeles, the colleges are across the street from one another and enroll nearly 4,500 undergraduates and approximately 2,100 graduate students.