The children and spouses of Harrisburg attorney G. Thomas Miller have donated more than $1.5 million to establish an academic chair at The Dickinson School of Law of Penn State.
The chair will be known as The Honorable G. Thomas and Anne G. Miller Chair in Advocacy and the holder of the chair also will serve as director of the Miller Center for Public Interest Advocacy.
The gift, the largest ever received by the law school, was given in honor of Miller '48 and his wife, Anne, by their children, daughter Leslie Anne Miller '77 and her husband, Richard Worley; daughter Sarah Miller; and son Thomas R. Miller '87 and his wife, Bernadette. Leslie Miller was the first woman president of the Pennsylvania Bar Association.
G. Thomas Miller has practiced law in Harrisburg for 50 years and now practices with his son in the firm of Miller & Miller. He served for two years as judge of the Dauphin County Court of Common Pleas. He has been a member of the law school's Board of Trustees since 1972 and is a former president of the law school's General Alumni Association.
The first holder of the Miller chair and first director of the Miller Center will be Gary S. Gildin, long-time coordinator of the law school's advocacy curriculum as well as its popular trial advocacy summer seminars for new attorneys and prosecutors. In 1999, Professor Gildin received the Richard S. Jacobson Award from the Roscoe Pound Foundation as the nation's leading teacher of trial advocacy.
A gift of $100,000 from First National Bank of Pennsylvania will establish scholarships at the University's Shenango and Erie locations. The gift will be split equally between the two campuses with each receiving $50,000 of the endowed funds.
The First National Bank of Pennsylvania Leadership Scholarship will provide recognition and financial assistance to outstanding full-time undergraduate students enrolled or planning to enroll at Penn State Shenango or Penn State Erie.
Each year, beginning in June 2002, the selection committee at each of these Penn State campuses will award $2,500 in scholarships to full-time undergraduate students who have achieved superior academic records; who are residents of Crawford, Erie, Lawrence, Mercer or Venango counties; and who demonstrate leadership abilities. Children of employees at First National Bank will be given first consideration, according to Stephen J. Gurgovits, president and CEO of First National Bank of Pennsylvania in Hermitage, Pa.
First National Bank of Pennsylvania operates 35 community bank branches and six insurance offices throughout northwest Pennsylvania. The bank is an affiliate of F.N.B. Corp., a $3.7 billion bank holding company serving banking, trust, consumer finance and insurance companies through 139 offices in Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio, New York, Tennessee and Kentucky.
Any questions about the scholarship should be directed to the Penn State Shenango Office of Financial Aid at (724) 983-2847.