The Hotchkiss School is
pleased to announce that it has received a $6-million gift from Edward B. “Ned”
Goodnow ’44 to establish the Goodnow Family Scholarship Fund and The Goodnow
Family Teaching Fund.
“Ned’s generosity is
transformational for the School,” said Head of School Malcolm McKenzie. “This
gift recognizes that the caliber of and thoughtfulness about teaching and
learning at Hotchkiss must be superior in depth, rigor, innovation, and
meaning. Both funds will foster a community of students and teachers joined by
a sense of shared purpose and intellectual curiosity.”
Added Hotchkiss Board of Trustees President Jean Weinberg Rose ’80, “We are grateful to Ned for his vision, his faith in Hotchkiss, and his generosity. His gift allows us to strengthen the foundation of academic excellence upon which Hotchkiss is built while ensuring the institution remains a leader in 21st-century education.”
The Goodnow Family Scholarship Fund ($5 million) is a permanent endowment that will help the School maintain the founding tradition of scholarship aid put forth by Maria Bissell Hotchkiss in 1891. This gift celebrates Hotchkiss’s charge to attract bright and talented students from a diversity of backgrounds, regardless of their families’ ability to afford tuition. Each year, one or more high-achieving students whose families demonstrate financial need will be recognized as Goodnow Scholars and will receive scholarship support from the fund.
The Goodnow Family Teaching Fund ($1 million) is a permanent endowment that will support the work and activities of the Hotchkiss Institute for Teaching. The Institute will promote critical reflection by the faculty, acquaint teachers with learner-centered classroom strategies, and integrate the School’s key initiatives with the full range of teachers’ practice. This summer, the Institute will debut the weeklong Hotchkiss Summer Faculty Symposium. The Symposium’s inaugural session will engage a cohort of Hotchkiss teachers in a progressive dialogue exploring the craft across the full range of teachers’ professional practice.
Having arrived in Lakeville on full scholarship as a prep in September 1940, Goodnow graduated from Hotchkiss in three years and entered Princeton in June of 1943. He entered the U.S. Army in January of 1944. He served as a rifleman in the infantry and was wounded in the Battle of the Bulge. He was recalled during the Korean War and served in Europe as an artillery forward observer.
After graduating from Princeton in 1949, he entered the investment business in New York City. In 1969 he founded Goodnow, Gray & Co., a highly successful asset management firm. He and Dee, his wife of 57 years, raised three children, including one Hotchkiss graduate (Carleton Throckmorton Goodnow ’80).
Goodnow’s gift to the School’s financial aid, and teaching and learning initiatives is a milestone in his decades-long stalwart support of scholarship and excellent instruction at Hotchkiss. In 1991, he endowed the Russel Murray Bigelow and E. Carleton Granbery Teaching Chairs, and has since made significant contributions to the Class of 1944 Memorial Scholarship, general scholarship fund, and The Hotchkiss Fund.