Ohio Wesleyan Gets $40 Million Gift for Faculty Pay and a New College

Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, Ohio, announced a $40 million gift on October 23. The money will raise faculty salaries and create the Mecum College of Arts and Humanities.

Dudley Mecum II, a member of the Class of 1956, and Harriet Zahn Mecum provided the trust commitment. The university says it ranks among the largest gifts ever made to an Ohio liberal arts institution. It will fund an endowment for faculty compensation and lift the arts and humanities division to college status. That division is the first of the university's three academic divisions to become a college. Two of the couple's children, Dudley Mecum III and Lynne Mecum, attended the announcement.

A new identity for the university

At the same event, the university introduced a new market identity: America's University for Ambitious Self-Discovery. The university says the approach is aimed at the pressure on 17- and 18-year-olds to pick a major, and with it a career, before they have explored their interests. The university cites an estimate that about 80% of college students change their major at least once within three years of enrolling.

First-year students at Ohio Wesleyan do not declare majors. They spend two semesters on core skills such as formal and quantitative reasoning, writing and speaking, and creative thinking. Every student also completes a connection experience, which can be an internship, undergraduate research, study away, a service project or a student-run business.

"At a time when many institutions are cutting the arts and humanities, we want to stand out as the place running back to them," vandenBerg said.

Faculty pay and the funding record

The gift supports the university's goal of ranking among the top central Ohio institutions for faculty pay. Several donor families have pledged about $4 million in additional endowed support, so compensation can grow before the Mecum trust funds arrive. The university is still raising money to expand the total.

Ohio Wesleyan raised $69.4 million in fiscal year 2025 and $94 million in fiscal year 2026, the two largest philanthropic totals in its history. It also reports its largest first-year classes in roughly 15 years and total enrollment at a decade high.

Source: Ohio Wesleyan University