Family Honors Parents with Math Professorship
The family of a couple that has dedicated nearly 40 years of service to the University of Connecticut is honoring their legacy with a new endowment. With a gift of $750,000, the four children of Stuart and Joan Sidney have established a professorship that will carry on their legacy of excellence in teaching and commitment to UConn. The Stuart and Joan Sidney Professor of Mathematics will be used to support an internationally recognized research mathematician and exceptional teacher at the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
“Joan and I want to thank our children for one of the most meaningful gifts either of us has ever received,” says Mr. Sidney. “It is just the latest reason, and there are so many, that we are so proud to be their parents.”
Mr. Sidney, professor of mathematics, retired this year after joining the faculty in 1971. Mrs. Sidney is a poet, writer-in-residence and special research associate at UConn’s Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life.
The Sidneys’ children were inspired by their tireless support of UConn. In addition to serving in the University Senate, Mr. Sidney helped lead the Foundation’s Close to Home campaign, encouraging fellow faculty and staff members to give back to UConn. The couple established the Frances and Irving Seliger Memorial Endowment Fund in memory of Mrs. Sidney’s parents in 2002. The fund awards merit scholarships to students studying the Holocaust.
In 2005, Mr. Sidney established the Mathematics Graduate Fund with two colleagues. And when he was honored with the Alumni Association Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching at the Graduate Level that same year, he donated the award to the Mathematics Graduate Fund.
“It is hard to imagine a more perfect gift than this mathematics professorship, which honors us while supporting the University with which we have been in a mutually supportive relation for decades, and the department that has nurtured me even as I hope I have helped to nurture it,” says Mr. Sidney.
