The University of Southern California has announced a $15 million commitment from alumna Elizabeth Van Hunnick in her family’s name to the Department of History at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. 

The single largest gift to a USC humanities department will endow three faculty chairs, establish a faculty research fund ($2 million), create a graduate student fellowship ($1 million), and name the department after the Van Hunnick family. The new faculty chairs will be named after Van Hunnick, her late father, and her sister.

“I am encouraged by the fact that we’ll have an outstanding history department, hopefully known nationwide and attracting many prominent scholars,” Hunnick said. “That’s important because you can see what’s happening in the world today; you see leaders and politicians making the same mistakes over and over again.” 

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