MOUNT VERNON — The United Methodist Foundation for Christian Higher Education has awarded a prestigious national honor to Richard Small, a 1950 Cornell College graduate, recent chair of the Cornell Board of Trustees and generous benefactor who has donated $34 million to the college.
Small, of Tulsa, Okla., received the 2000 Stanley S. Kresge Award, which annually honors a member of the United Methodist Church who demonstrates dedicated membership to the church and unselfish support of United Methodist-related education. Cornell is an independent college affiliated with the United Methodist Church.
“Dick’s leadership in and philanthropy to Cornell College, Boston Avenue United Methodist Church in Tulsa and the Oklahoma United Methodist Foundation are genuine expressions of his commitment to the United Methodist heritage of concern for Christian higher education and programs to serve the disenfranchised, the marginalized and those with little or no voice,” said Cornell President Les Garner Jr. in nominating Small for the award.
Small joined the Cornell Board of Trustees in 1971 and chaired the board from 1993 to 1996. He and his wife, Norma, are Cornell’s most generous donors. Of the $34 million they have donated, $20 million was a challenge gift for a $60 million campaign in 1990. Other large gifts have been used for renovations to campus facilities, including the Richard and Norma Small Life Sports Center, residence halls and Law Hall, which reopens this fall as a campus technology center; and Cornell’s first fully endowed faculty chair, the Richard and Norma Small Senior Faculty Chair. The Smalls founded and underwrote a lecture series that debuted this year, “Dreams of Peace, Visions of the Future,” featuring presentations at Cornell and St. Paul’s United Methodist Church in Cedar Rapids.