The School of Social Work (SSW) and the Flint community will benefit from a $2.25 million gift by Regent Olivia Maynard and her husband, Olof Karlstrom. Their gift will provide momentum for the University’s upcoming fundraising campaign, scheduled to kick off in May 2004.

In addition to supporting the top-ranked SSW, Maynard and Karlstrom wanted their gift to have an impact in the Flint community, says alumnus and campaign co-chair Richard Rogel.

President Mary Sue Coleman says, “This wonderful and thoughtful gift reflects the care and concern both Libby and Olle have always demonstrated for their community and for the most vulnerable among us. I am deeply touched by their generosity in creating a mechanism within Social Work to expand education and research on some of the most important social problems of our time.”

The gift will establish an endowment for the Olivia P. Maynard Professorship in Social Justice. The faculty member who holds this named professorship will teach and conduct research in the field of social justice, poverty, diversity or social welfare policy. In addition, he or she will teach and work with students in community-based research at both the Ann Arbor and Flint campuses.

The gift also will support the involvement of faculty and students in the community with the creation of the Olivia P. Maynard and S. Olof Karlstrom Faculty Award Fund for Community-Based Research. The fund will promote the work of an outstanding faculty member and students in communities in need throughout Michigan, including Detroit and Flint.

“Nathanial Hawthorne wrote, Generosity is the flower of justice.’ Two generous donors have taken this quote to heart,” Dean Paula Allen-Meares says. “This endowed chair will create an opportunity for the School of Social Work, the Flint campus and community, and the Detroit community to work together to solve pressing social and economic problems for vulnerable populations.”

“Social justice has been, remains, and will continue to be a major factor in our nation’s public policy life,” Maynard says. “It is appropriate that our gift be given a special place in the School of Social Work. We welcomed the opportunity to assist in fostering research and teaching that directly involves the two places that have figured so prominently in our lives, the University of Michigan and the Flint community.”

Maynard, a Democrat from Goodrich, was elected to the Board of Regents in 1996. She received a master’s degree in social work from the University in 1971. She is president of The Michigan Prospect and sits on the boards of the C.S. Mott Foundation, the Council of Michigan Foundations and Planned Parenthood of Michigan. Karlstrom holds three degrees from U-M and is an attorney in private practice in Flint.