Roberts Fund for Classical Studies: A Case Study

The Roberts Fund was established with a gift of roughly $2 million in 2001. The goal of that funding was simple: support Dickinson’s classics department by funding faculty, internships, global study, lectures and more.

During the last two decades, the fund has added more than $3.3 million to the department’s budget, with the annual support it provides growing by 64% during that time. Furthermore, due to sound investment strategy and disciplined budgeting, the fund has remained wholly intact, as it has generated more than one and a half times its value in support for the department over those years.

This is the power of endowed giving—perpetual funding that never diminishes but actually grows over time. And the full impact goes well beyond those numbers, as over that time the funding has enhanced the study of classics at Dickinson in the following ways:

Student Support

• Every classics major can study abroad, regardless of financial need.
• Paid internships helped build and sustain the Dickinson Classical Commentaries (DCC) website.
• Funding enables students to participate in archaeological digs abroad, including an excavation in Tunisia and the Dickinson dig at Mycenae.
• Support provided for Dickinson’s globally integrated courses in Roman and Greek history, which take students to Rome and Greece for 10 days as part of their coursework.

The Roberts Lecture

• Each fall, the fund brings to campus a scholar or intellectual of international renown for three days of lectures, discussions and events.
• This program has become a college-wide highlight, drawing participation from multiple departments as well as the provost and president.

Faculty & Student Research

• Support for faculty research has generated numerous books and articles by Dickinson professors.
• Funding supports and enhances collaborative student–faculty research projects.

Dickinson Classical Commentaries 

• For 15 years, the fund has supported the technology and labor needed to build a world-class website for teachers, scholars and students of classics.
• The site drew 1.6 million views last year and reached 400,000 users worldwide.

High School Outreach

• Summer Latin and Greek workshops bring teachers to campus (or virtually) for professional development.
• Programs have been developed for high school students to study ancient languages and contribute to the DCC—last summer, 95 schools participated online.

When you look at some of the more recent funds detailed in this report (the Hare family’s athletics endowments, the endowment behind the Burgess Institute or new scholarships, for instance), think of what this example means for them over the next few decades. The impact you read about of these and other gifts in this report will only grow stronger in the future.

And the same is true for any endowed gift made today. This is the power of endowed giving.

Whether it’s an academic program, athletics or something else entirely, powerful impact combined with sound longterm investment leads to a legacy of increasing and never-ending enhancement for the area of Dickinson that is most meaningful to the donor.

“The Roberts Fund has made our department one of the most dynamic and unique in the country. For more than 30 years, it has given students opportunities that allow them to be ambitious, expand their horizons and achieve their full potential.” 

—Marc Mastrangelo, Professor of Classical Studies

Published November 27, 2025