Planned Gift Enhances Arts Management Student Support

For College of Charleston adjunct faculty member and arts administrator Judith Allen, it's all about the students. So it isn't a surprise to those who know Allen that students play a leading role in her legacy plan.

Throughout her years teaching in the Arts Management program at the College, Allen has found great joy in sharing her professional savvy with new generations of arts practitioners. She also knows well how the program's required internship can greatly inform and enhance an understanding of the field. At the same time, it can present challenges for students who must also work while attending college.

To help Arts Management degree candidates get the most out of these intensive, transformative internships, Allen came up with a hands-on way to lighten their load. She funded the Scott Shanklin-Peterson Internship Endowment which offers support to students who would otherwise need work full or part time in addition to taking classes. That way, they can free up their schedules in order to meet the added demands of an internship.

"Internship stipends assist students who are struggling financially, juggling their classes, their internship and their jobs," says Allen, who is supplementing the fund with a beneficiary designation gift from her estate.

Allen's chosen channel of philanthropy also draws on her professional background as an arts administrator, a vocation that often puts forth practical solutions for the challenges of today's arts sector. By addressing an all-too-real source of pressure for many students, Allen has created a grassroots, personal way of nurturing the potential of today's aspiring arts advocates.

What's more, she has done so by paying fitting tribute to her friend and fellow arts professional. The fund commemorates former College of Charleston colleague Scott Shanklin-Peterson, who served as director of the Arts Management Program in the School of the Arts for more than a decade.

Thanks to Allen's generous gift, arts management students will be able to make the most of the tremendous opportunities that await them at the College of Charleston. At the same time, they will also gain greater understanding of the life-changing power of a legacy planning.