By Joel Magalnick, Editor, JTNews
The state’s premier source for Jewish education at the college level has just been given a boost. On January 6, the Jewish Studies Program at the University of Washington announced the Lucia S. and Herbert L. Pruzan Endowed Professorship in Jewish Studies, which will be used for attracting and retaining faculty for the program.
The Jewish Studies Program is a part of the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies.
“Technically, it is a professorship that will be held by whoever the chair of the Jewish Studies program is,” said Prof. Paul Burstein, who is midway through his three-year term as program chair. As the first faculty member to hold the endowment, which will launch in the 2005-2006 school year, it will likely be used to help ease his administrative workload. Burstein, who in addition to teaching some classes and running the program, also works full-time in the department of Sociology.
The Pruzans, both of whom are graduates of the UW, gave $500,000 to the program, which was matched halfway by the university for a total of a $750,000 endowment.
“We have been concerned that there hasn’t been sufficient appreciation of the program by the local community,” said Herb Pruzan, “and we wanted to provide additional, ongoing financial support for the chair of the program and its operating needs, so that it can grow and become an increasingly vital part of the education of our general community.”
Pruzan also chairs the program’s advisory board, which was formed three years ago. Burstein said that the Pruzans and the board have been working to increase the visibility of the program, which he said sometimes falls in the shadows of other Jewish education programs in the state.
“They’ve taken a great deal of interest in the program,” said Burstein. “They really think it’s an important part of the education system of the Jewish community here, and they’ve really made helping it a priority.”
The Jewish Studies Program borrows most of its faculty from other university departments, but teaches a wide range of historical and cultural topics from an academic point of view, Burstein said. Its first full-time faculty member. Prof. Noam Pianko, joined the program at the beginning of the 2004-2005 school year.
Because of limited state support, some popular courses, such as Introductory Hebrew, have been oversubscribed. This past quarter, only one freshman was able to get into the course.
“This is a terrible limitation to what we can do,” Burstein said. One of the board’s first major projects will be to raise funds for a full-time lecturer for both modern and Biblical Hebrew.
The addition of faculty has been a boon to the program, which is popular with Jewish and non-Jewish students alike.
“We would like people to think about what we do as the high end of Jewish education,” Burstein said. “We’re a critical part of the community’s resources.”
Some program funding, besides a limited amount from the state, comes from the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle as well as through an endowment from Sam and Althea Stroum, which is known for its popular lecture series.