$1M gift given to Clemson University

Clemson University has received more than $1 million to establish two endowments, one to provide scholarships and one to create an endowed professorship in the electrical and computer engineering department. Given by an anonymous benefactor, the endowments are named in memory of Clemson alumnus Samuel Lewis Bell. Half of the money will establish the Samuel Lewis Bell and Lucia Beason Bell Memorial Scholarship Endowment, which will award scholarships to undergraduate students from the Chester area. This gift is part of the university’s “The Will to Lead” capital campaign to raise $1 billion to support Clemson students and faculty with scholarships, professorships, facilities, technology and enhanced opportunities for learning and research. The other half of the money will create the Samuel Lewis Bell Distinguished Professorship, which will support an endowed position in the Holcombe Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, part of the College of Engineering and Science. The professorship will focus specifically on optoelectronics, the study of the interaction of light with electronic devices using photons and electrons, and will work with COMSET, the Center for Optical Materials Science and Engineering Technologies. A Chester native, Bell graduated from Clemson in 1925 with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering.