In the early ‘80s, professor David Bennett took a handful of students to Europe for a summer semester.

The history professor led the group through the battlefield trenches of World War I, the bomb craters canvassing the French beaches from World War II and many harrowing museums and sites of two of the bloodiest wars in human history.

‘We took a week tour of France. We stopped briefly in Somme, where there was a major offensive in 1916. In two and a half hours, the British saw 20,000 casualties,’ Bennett said. ‘These places were extraordinarily memorable. That’s where we brought a few good Syracuse students. One of them was Andrew Berlin, and he was remarkable.’

It was because of these memories and the impact Bennett had on Berlin, the president and chief executive officer of Berlin Packaging in Chicago and class of ’83 alumnus, that Berlin decided to give back to Syracuse University with a $500,000 endowment gift for research. The half-million dollar Andrew Berlin Family National Security Research Fund is the most recent contribution to SU’s rapidly expanding research gifts, which are at record levels after exploding in 2009.

Donors like Berlin help enable faculty and students, alike, to apply their area of interest to real-world dilemmas, as in the case of Berlin’s endowment. The gift will fund faculty and graduate research in the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism.

‘It fits an agenda of mine, not only politically, but as someone who loves his country,’ Berlin said. ‘On 9/11, at that moment in time, nothing mattered other than, ‘Who did this?’ And stopping them from ever doing this again. I chose to support an institute that can provide necessary research, regardless of political affiliation.’

Gifts for research in particular fields have caused research funds to the university to grow exponentially in the past four years. In 2006, SU brought in $50 million for research. The allotment for 2010 is more than $85 million, said Gina Lee-Glauser, vice president of research for SU.

The dramatic jump in funding occurred at the height of the recession. From 2007 to 2008, research funds had only grown by $4 million — from $52 million to $56 million. But from 2008 to 2009, research funds jumped from $56 million to $72 million, Lee-Glauser said.

A large portion of the increase from 2008 to 2009 in research funds came through the federal government, as a result of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, Lee-Glauser said.

Lee-Glauser stressed the expansion of gifts covers a range of disciplines and is not confined to a single area like the sciences.

Many initiatives that got off the ground in the past two or three years caused the enormous spike in research dollars, she said. These include grants for the College of Visual and Performing Arts to employ graduate students; student-teaching jobs with Say Yes to Education; energy and environmental research through the Syracuse Center of Excellence; cyber security research at the College of Law; and the creation of a minor in global enterprise technology in cooperation with JPMorgan Chase & Co., Lee-Glauser said.

The various institutes and research organizations are among the greatest attractors of research funds to the university, as many of its faculty, who write grant proposals or enter competitions for research money, Lee-Glauser said.

Berlin’s $500,000 gift to INSCT in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs will enable graduate students and faculty research in perpetuity because the grant is an endowment, said William Banks, director of INSCT.

‘It’s a major gift and a tremendous boost for us,’ Banks said. ‘The idea is that we’ll be able to make grants to support research by students and professors. It will take a little time for the fund to build and produce an income from the endowment.’

Professors like Banks work through the institute on projects focused on solving one of America’s biggest challenges, counterterrorism. Currently, Banks’ projects include studying reform to federal surveillance laws, comparing laws of war in Islamic communities with Western laws of war and counterinsurgency.

Likewise, Bennett, who the gift honored, has also contributed to the institute as a source for American and military history. He is currently compiling a book on the history of terrorism through the contemporary wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said.

In addition to giving a boost to research in Maxwell, the gift bolsters SU’s struggling endowment, which saw a dramatic drop in 2008 from just more than $1 billion to $630 million. The gift also contributes to SU’s billion-dollar campaign, which hopes to attract $1 billion in gifts to the campus by 2012, said Brian Sischo, vice president for development, in an e-mail.

The billion-dollar campaign is the culmination of all the gifts for SU colleges, building projects, endowments, research and every other area on campus since July 2005.

‘This gift absolutely ties to two key priorities in the campaign for Syracuse University in that it not only supports a major academic initiative at the Maxwell School as part of cross-connections campaign priority, but it will provide invaluable research support to faculty for generations as part of the faculty excellence campaign component,’ Sischo said.

The campaign currently stands at more than $765 million, Sischo said. Administrators are hoping to reach $800 million by December.

Berlin’s gift, along with the millions of dollars donated for other targeted research, will enhance the practical components of an education at SU.

‘I find it very touching for him to do that,’ Bennett said. ‘It was great for me; it was great for him to do this for the university.’

rastrum@syr.edu

Published on September 27, 2010 at 12:00 pm