Jaffe Gifts Benefit Four Areas At Penn State

10-8-97
University Park, Pa.-Gifts totaling $250,000 from Penn State alumnus William A. Jaffe and his wife, Honora, of State College, will support three academic programs and a new alumni center at the University.

A portion of the funds will endow the William and Honora Jaffe Senior Transitional Seminar in the Academic Support Center for Student-Athletes. The one-credit seminar will be offered for the first time in spring 1998. It is designed as a life skills program to help student-athletes channel what they've learned from college-level sports to other aspects of their lives-such as the job market, graduate school, or professional sports.

Other gifts from the Jaffes will benefit the Penn State Hillel Foundation, a home away from home for the University's Jewish student population; a scholarship fund for the College of Communications, which recently named William Jaffe an Alumni Fellow; and the future Alumni Center, which will be developed as an addition to University House at the University Park campus.

William Jaffe grew up in Philipsburg. He earned his bachelor's degree in journalism from Penn State in 1960, and a master's degree in management from the University of Illinois in 1962. He heads the Jaffe Group, a State College-based human resources consulting firm. Before forming the Jaffe Group, he spent 28 years with two international consulting companies, Towers Perrin and Alexander & Alexander, and served as an adjunct associate professor of management science at The George Washington University.

For Penn State, he serves on the boards of the College of Communications Alumni Society, the Hillel Foundation and the Nittany Lion Club Advisory Council. He has also held various leadership positions with the Alumni Association Council and the Lion's Paw honor society, and served as regional co-chair of the fund-raising campaign for the faculty chair in Jewish Studies. He is president of the Mount Nittany Conservancy, and a member of the Athletic Department's Campaign Committee.

He received a Service to Penn State Award from the College of the Liberal Arts in 1991, and previously created the Reuben Jaffe Memorial Journalism Scholarship in honor of his father, a 1922 Penn State graduate in electrical engineering.

Honey Jaffe serves on the Community Advisory Council of the Center for the Performing Arts at Penn State. The Jaffes' daughter, Robin, graduated in 1995 from the College of the Liberal Arts, and their son, Matthew, attended Penn State as well.

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Contact: Gary Cramer (814) 863-4512 (office) gwc104@psu.edu