University of Manitoba granted with Millions from Estate

Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009

In its 131 years of existence, University of Manitoba recently received the largest bequest throughout its history.  The money, $7 million, will ensure that its university library purchases more books.

William and Margaret Strobie gave the gift.  They taught English literature at the university for decades and they want to instill the love of books to young professors and thousands of students.  When Margaret died in 1990 and her husband, William, followed in 2007, he decided to leave their Inuit art, papers, book collection, and a fortune of stocks to the school.

In 2003, William Stobie contacted the university and made an initial outright gift specifically for the library to have an endowment fund and buy books in their name.  The director of planned giving, Beth Proven, met him in 2005 and said, “Before he even talked with anybody, that’s already his wish.  It’s the largest one I ever came across with.”

“Strobie’s wish was very specific,” Proven added.  The money should go into buying books for specific areas of Slavic studies, French, German, Italian, Spanish, English literature, philosophy, and the classics.  It was estimated that the estate will most likely generate $315,000 interest every year to buy these books.

Tags: bequest, books, endowment fund, gift, Margaret Strobie, Planned Giving, University of Manitoba, William Strobie
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Effect of Divorce on Kids

Friday, May 29th, 2009

Now, a new research says that the effect of divorce on education and emotional impact on children is getting worse. Two Canadian Universities (University of Manitoba and University of Alberta) conducted a study to warn parents and consider the deadly consequences of their divorce on the children.

The study says that school dropout rates are definitely higher among children of divorced parents compared to kids with parents who are still together. The consequences are lethal on children of parents who went through two or more divorces. Compared to stable families, there’s a 50% chance that these children will completely drop off from school.

The study’s co-author and university divorce expert Lisa Strohschein said, “The number of changes experienced by the children and how they grow as young adults can be seen in this long-run picture. As part of the study, researchers looked at data on 9,400 children adopted or born on 1984 in two-parent families.

Then, these children were tracked until 2004 (when they’re 20 years old) to find out what happened in their life. The researchers found that out of 9,400 children, only 1,325 children saw one divorce, 285 saw two divorces, and 52 had three divorces.

Detailed results of the study also stated that 78.4% of children without divorced parents completed high school while only 60% of children with divorced parents did.

Tags: Canadian Universities, Divorce, Lisa Strohschein, researchers, study, University of Alberta, University of Manitoba
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