Goucher College receives $2.5M gift from The Sigmund M. Hyman Foundation

Mary B. Hyman, President of the Sigmund M. Hyman Foundation, has announced a $2.5M planned gift to Goucher College, the largest gift the foundation has ever given to a Maryland school. This generous gift will support merit scholarships, capital projects, and student-faculty research.

Mary is a Goucher trustee emerita and alumna (1971). She received a bachelor’s degree in sociology from the college. The foundation’s gift will honor the close relationship she and her late husband, Sigmund Hyman, had with Goucher.

“I never would have had this career [referring to her 20-year career at the Maryland Science Center  and her 26-year tenure at Loyola University Maryland ] without Goucher. It was fabulous,” says Mary.

One third of the foundation’s grant will support the Sigmund M. and Mary B. Hyman ’71 Merit Scholarship in Science. Since 1997, 16 Goucher students have received the scholarship, some for multiple years.

The sciences are something Mary feels passionately about, and with this gift she hopes to enhance science literacy and research.

“You can’t learn environmental science from a book, you’ve got to go out in the field,” she says.

The remaining two-thirds of Mary’s bequest will also go toward student-faculty collaborative research and capital support for improved facilities for the science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields (STEM).

“I, along with the entire Goucher community, am honored and grateful for the support from The Sigmund M. Hyman Foundation. Contributions like this are life-changing to our students and faculty,” says President José Antonio Bowen. “This gift will help us with making significant capital improvements that will benefit the STEM fields at Goucher. Once again, the foundation has played an integral part in Goucher’s future.”

The foundation has already been extremely generous to Goucher. In 2005, the foundation gave Goucher $1 million to the Transcending Boundaries Campaign for the annual fund and the Sanford J. Ungar Athenaeum.

An area within the athenaeum, modeled after the amphitheaters of Europe, was named the Sigmund and Mary Hyman ’71 Forum. The forum is a wide-open space configured to host various readings, performances, panel discussions, and other public events. It can accommodate crowds to observe and participate in the programs and events.

The foundation’s generosity has also impacted two other colleges in the region, Loyola University Maryland (Baltimore) and Franklin & Marshall College (Lancaster, Penn.). Sigmund Hyman, an F&M alumnus (1947), was a long-time member of F&M’s Board of Trustees, and Mary is a member of F&M’s Board of Visitors and Founders Society. The foundation contributed $1.5 million to the college. The foundation also awarded Loyola University Maryland a $2 million planned gift. Mary recently retired from Loyola, after working as the coordinator of science education programs and the Institute for Childcare Education for over a quarter-century.

Mary has also been very involved in the Baltimore community. She has served on more than a dozen boards, and, in addition to those already mentioned, currently serves on the boards of the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Maryland Science Center, and The Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth.

Scroll to Top