Through a family foundation, two cousins, both Newcomb alumnae, teamed up earlier this year to provide the Newcomb College Center for Research on Women with a $50,000 gift.

The gift, made by Dana Zale Gerard '85 and Karen Landsberg Seltzer '83 through the Dallas-based M.B. and Edna Zale Foundation, has been used to establish the Seltzer-Gerard Reading Room at the Center for Research on Women.

Seltzer, a native of Long Island, N.Y., said the gift to the center was something she and Gerard had discussed for some time. "We had always talked about making a gift together and we wanted it to be for Newcomb," she said. "After discussing with Beth Willinger [director of the Newcomb College Center for Research on Women] what her needs for the center were, we decided that this is where we could do most good."

The families of the M.B. and Edna Zale Foundation have been unfailing supporters of Newcomb for more than a decade. At Gerard's urging, the foundation has sponsored the Zale Writer-in-Residence program at Newcomb since 1985. The highly acclaimed program brings a woman writer to campus for a week each fall. The writer teaches classes, meets with students, gives a public reading of her works and a meet-the-author interview.

"The [Zale] program began as a five-year pledge born out of a passion for literature, and fueled by the desire to fill what I percieved as an institutional gap," Gerard said. "It has now become a 13-year tradition of women writers visiting Newcomb College who not only teach and advise, but inspire those who encounter them to reach our goals, whatever they may be.

"The Seltzer-Gerard Reading Room is a natural outcome of the M.B. and Edna Zale Foundation's long term partnership with the Center for Reseach on Women," Gerard continued. "As the center approaches its future with an eye for expansion, the Zale Foundation is helping to facilitate that growth."

Without the generosity of the M.B. and Edna Zale Foundation, neither the writer-in-residence program nor the reading room would have been possible, said center director Beth Willinger. "The foundation's gifts have truly made a difference by enriching the academic life of students on campus," Willinger said. "The reading room, in particular, not only provides quiet space for students, but it enhances the resources of the library and the center itself."

The Seltzer-Gerard Reading Room, located on the first floor of the Caroline Richardson Building, was most recently used as a classroom, lecture and reception space. It has been fully renovated now to accomodate the ever-expanding Nadine Vorhoff Library with several comfortable reading and student areas. The space on the second floor that was originally home to the library is now a computer room with 12 computers for use by the students and faculty, and the Anna Many Lounge is back in its original location on the second floor.

The reading room is scheduled to be dedicated on Oct. 23, 1997, in conjuction with the visit of the 13th Zale Writer-in-Residence, playwright and performance artist Deb Margolin.

For details about the dedication or a schedule of Margolin's appearances, contact the Newcomb College Center for Research on Women at (504)865-5238.



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