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$2.5 million donation to St. Lawrence University to endow teaching position honoring longtime psychology professor

Posted 4/22/16

CANTON -- A $2.5 million donation to St. Lawrence University from an alumna will endow a teaching position to honor a longtime psychology professor “for his 40-year impact on students, children and …

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$2.5 million donation to St. Lawrence University to endow teaching position honoring longtime psychology professor

Posted

CANTON -- A $2.5 million donation to St. Lawrence University from an alumna will endow a teaching position to honor a longtime psychology professor “for his 40-year impact on students, children and teachers,” SLU said.

Hilary Ayn Valentine, who graduated from the school in 1989, donated the cash for the James R. Wallace Professorship in Psychology, SLU said.

Valentine earned a degree in psychology and has supported the Department of Psychology through her gifts to the Valentine Foundation Psychology Fund, as well as other university interests. The fund supports student and faculty research, student participation at conferences and a career library.

Wallace, an associate professor of psychology, joined the St. Lawrence faculty in 1974. In his 40-plus years of teaching developmental psychology, more than 5,000 St. Lawrence graduates have taken his course, the school said.

“Jim Wallace was a wonderful teacher and mentor to me and many other students at St. Lawrence,” Valentine said in a prepared statement from SLU. “I have always wanted to honor him appropriately. With his upcoming retirement, I can think of no better way of thanking and honoring him than to establish a professorship in Jim Wallace’s name.”

Until recently, Wallace also led the Developmental Play Group, a program that started with the opening of Flint Hall the year before he began teaching at St. Lawrence.

“The playgroup took in six to eight students, two hours a day, Monday through Thursday,” Wallace said. “It was a place where college students could learn to be objective observers of child behavior.”

As a student, Valentine participated in several collaborative research projects with psychology faculty and worked closely with Wallace in the Developmental Play Group program.

“That mentorship developed into a lifelong friendship,” the statement reads.

Wallace’s teaching has been recognized with the Owen D. Young Outstanding Faculty Member voted by the senior class in 1978 and 1999. Dozens of his publications and presentations list student co-authors. He plans to retire in May 2017.

“Any faculty member would feel great about having an impact on a student that was remembered years later,” Wallace said. “It’s why we’re here and do what we do. I’m truly astonished by this gift.”

The endowment will fund the new tenure-track position in the Department of Psychology and, in the first year, a portion of the income will be used to renovate office and lab space for the added position.

Senior faculty in Psychology may apply and be considered for the Wallace Professorship. The faculty member, selected by the university's Faculty Professional Standards Committee and president, will serve a seven-year term.