The family of a couple who have dedicated nearly 40 years of service to the University of Connecticut is honoring their legacy with a new endowment.
With a gift of $750,000, the four children of Stuart and Joan Sidney have established a professorship that will carry on their legacy of excellence in teaching and commitment to UConn. The Stuart and Joan Sidney Professor of Mathematics endowment will support an internationally recognized research mathematician and exceptional teacher in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
“Joan and I want to thank our children for one of the most meaningful gifts either of us has ever received,” says Stuart Sidney. “It is just the latest reason, and there are so many, that we are so proud to be their parents.”
Stuart Sidney, professor of mathematics, retired this year; he joined the faculty in 1971. Joan Sidney is a poet, writer-in-residence, and special research associate at UConn’s Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life.
The Sidneys’ children were inspired by their parents’ tireless support of UConn.
“With our father’s retirement, the timely creation of this professorship seemed the perfect way to tie together a number of themes of importance to us: to celebrate and honor our parents, to contribute towards the future of mathematics and teaching, to help out the University, and to maintain closeness between our family and the University,” says Dan Sidney.
In addition to serving on the University Senate, Stuart Sidney helped lead the Foundation’s Close to Home campaign, encouraging fellow faculty and staff members to give back to UConn. In 2002, the couple established the Frances and Irving Seliger Memorial Endowment Fund in memory of Joan Sidney’s parents. The fund awards merit scholarships to students studying the Holocaust.
In 2005, Stuart Sidney established the Mathematics Graduate Fund with two colleagues. And when he was honored with the Alumni Association Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching at the Graduate Level that same year, he donated the award to the Mathematics Graduate Fund.
“It is hard to imagine a more perfect gift than this mathematics professorship, which honors us while supporting the University with which we have been in a mutually supportive relationship for decades, and the department that has nurtured me even as I hope I have helped to nurture it,” he says.
A video interview with Stuart and Joan Sidney is available at the UConn Foundation’s website.
