FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -- 10/2/02 | Contact: Diana Smith, 719-389-6138  

COLORADO SPRINGS -- The Mark and Catherine Winkler Foundation has endowed a professorship in Colorado College’s psychology department. The $1.5 million gift creates the Winkler-Herman Professorship in Psychology for an existing tenured professor. The college has appointed Tomi-Ann Roberts, former chair of the psychology department, as the first Winkler-Herman Professor. The gift also releases funds to add a new junior faculty position in the psychology department.

Roberts will hold the professorship for a five-year period, beginning with the 2003-2004 academic year. She holds a doctorate in psychology from Stanford and a bachelor’s degree in psychology, magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from Smith College. Her research interests include the social psychology of women, gender, and the body. “Roberts’ appointment as the first Winkler-Herman Professor is an expression of the college’s confidence in her future work and recognition for the many accomplishments already to her credit,” said Richard Storey, dean of the college.

Colorado College has experienced growing demand for its psychology courses, reflecting increasing student interest in the field over the last decade. The gift’s timing is fortuitous. ‘We are very grateful to the Winkler Foundation for creating this professorship, and for their support of the endowment,” said Storey. “The gift will have a major impact on the already strong teaching, learning, and research that characterizes our psychology department.”

The Winkler-Herman Professorship, combined with the addition of a faculty member, will present opportunities for new initiatives, such as more cross-disciplinary teaching, student-faculty collaborative research, and community-based internships.

Catherine Winkler-Herman, president of the foundation, is a philanthropist whose daughter and granddaughters have attended Colorado College. Her family foundation has made several significant gifts to the college during the past 40 years. Concerned about access to education in the liberal arts and sciences for single parents, Herman and her late husband Mark created the Mark and Catherine Winkler Scholarship Fund at the college in 1982. The fund, now valued at over $2 million, provides scholarship support for education and childcare expenses for CC students who are single parents. During the 2001-2002 academic year, seven students were awarded the scholarship.

The Winkler-Herman Professor and other members of the psychology faculty will soon be teaching in the new Russell T. Tutt Science Center, currently under construction and scheduled for occupancy in the fall of 2003. With more than 51,000 square feet of laboratory space and smart classrooms, the center will house environmental science, geology, neuroscience, mathematics, and the psychology department, supporting state-of-the-art instruction, research spaces and providing room for growth.

Founded in 1874, Colorado College combines the flexibility of the Block Plan – in which students take and professors teach only one course at a time – with the vast natural laboratory of the Rocky Mountains and desert Southwest. The private liberal arts college enrolls about 1,900 undergraduates.

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