For Barry Brandeis, the case for giving to Penn State Abington has almost nothing to do with money.

“Just as there’s more than one way to skin a cat, as they say, there are many, many ways to make a contribution.” His first endowment with Penn State Abington began with “positive thinking” and a serendipitous phone call from Abington’s Office of Development and Alumni Relations in the late 1990s. He’d already been thinking about creating a scholarship or some other endowed fund for he and his wife’s alma mater – Penn State University.

When Abington called, Barry’s thoughts on an endowed award revolved around his own experience as a student – smart, from a middle class background, and the recipient of financial aid via an academic scholarship. His first thought was to create an endowment that would award a student who demonstrated academic excellence, financial need, and the desire to go up to University Park after their first two years at Abington. The concept underwent development, however, after Barry realized how many students were choosing to stay at Abington for all four years. He thought, why not reward students with strong academic performance, the need for financial aid, and the intention of experiencing an opportunity that he and his classmates never received – a four-year degree from Penn State Abington.

“So many alums of Penn State received financial assistance as students, myself included. I see the Brandeis Award and the Barry and Renee Brandeis Scholarship as two more opportunities for students with financial need to attend Penn State when perhaps it would have been cost prohibitive otherwise.” His vision is one of “limitless opportunity” for education and that vision has expanded over time to include other ideas on strengthening the environment in which Abington students learn.

As an entrepreneur himself, Barry Brandeis has made a living in the world of business, as a business-owner, as well as in the world of higher education, as a professor for years at Pace University. He’s also long been an admirer of Abington’s ACURA program. Taking into account his creative side –as someone who developed his own business, his business side –as someone who’s taught a course on Entrepreneurship and who has managed his own company, and his ideology as a donor, well, it’s only natural that Barry would want to find a way to explore all those interests and see if he could encapsulate all of them within one endowment. And he could.

The Barry and Renee Brandeis Business Program Endowment for Penn State Abington expands upon the ideas of educational opportunities, program longevity, and creative giving. “Even if you’re an English major… or an Art or a Psych major… there are basic principles of the business world that advocate and teach methods of budgeting, accounting, responsible living, and give perspective on investments. “If nothing less, every student has made an investment on their education. They need to understand effective, responsible budgeting and so forth just as much as they need to have reading and writing skills. Let’s find a way to use the resources of Penn State University, and the growing Business program at Abington, to implement these ideas. Let’s explore that,” he says.

And that’s what his latest endowment will do: explore the business program, looking at the possible creation of a prerequisite course beyond the freshman year, but essentially focusing on supporting new and emerging concepts and technology in the Penn State Abington curriculum. Ten years after its endowment, it will become a scholarship supporting students with a Bachelor’s degree from Abington who are enrolled or plan to enroll in graduate level study at any Penn State business or MBA program.

A Call to Action. “Anyone can contribute, any way they like, really.” And that’s certainly been Barry’s motto. “Give a dollar a year, give ten dollars a week, volunteer your time, share your thoughts, give what you can… but give back.”