Schools
SJSU Professor's Estate Gifts School $4.8 Million
The estate of a late San Jose State University professor has gifted the school nearly $5 million, university officials said Tuesday.
(Bruce Springsteen with Art Ring and Martha Cox 1996)
SAN JOSE (BCN) The estate of a late San Jose State University professor has gifted the school nearly $5 million, university officials said Tuesday.
The estate of professor emeritus of English and comparative literature Martha Heasley Cox will give the university $4.8 million to support a research center that was named after her, the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies.
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Cox taught at SJSU for 34 years.
In September 2015, she died at the age of 96, according to university officials.
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The bequest from Cox's estate puts her total lifetime donation to the university at $5.5 million, the largest total ever for a faculty member, SJSU officials said.
Born in 1919 in Arkansas, Cox first began teaching at San Jose State in 1955, after having earned her bachelor's and doctoral degree in her home state.
While adjusting to California, Cox began collecting material from author John Steinbeck, a collection that grew so extensive, it was included in plans for the school's Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library, which opened in 2003.
The Steinbeck Studies center has become the only university research archive in the world dedicated solely to Steinbeck's life and work, according to SJSU officials.
The gift from Cox's estate will support the center, which has now grown into an organization with programs created to encourage authors and scholars, such as the Martha Heasley Cox Steinbeck Fellowship, which will receive $3.1 million from the bequest.
"Her vision was to bring together a group of scholars drawn from the disciplines Steinbeck practiced -- including fiction, drama, journalism and marine biology," Steinbeck Studies center director and associate professor of English and Comparative Literature Nicholas Taylor said in a statement.
"The bequest will allow SJSU to expand the program significantly bringing 10 or more fellows to campus each year," Taylor said.
Cox's bequest will also give $1 million to fund the Martha Heasley Cox Lecture Series.
Additionally, the Cox-Manville Steinbeck Bibliography of everything Steinbeck will receive $690,000, university officials said.
-Bay City News, image via sjsu.edu