UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — For Clarence Lang and Jennifer Hamer, philanthropy is another way to show up for the people and programs they care about in the College of the Liberal Arts. Their recent $125,000 commitment will create two new funds designed to pair long-term impact with flexibility for immediate needs: the College of the Liberal Arts Research Fund and the Hamer-Lang Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) Support Fund.
The gift from the spouses — Lang, Susan Welch Dean of the College of the Liberal Arts and professor of African American studies, and Hamer, professor of African American studies and women’s, gender and sexuality studies —will be divided evenly between the two funds.
Over the years, Hamer and Lang have contributed to the college in a variety of ways, including helping students to meet urgent needs during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, Hamer also established the Jennifer Hamer Fund to Enhance Student Success in the College of the Liberal Arts to assist students in the Department of African American Studies, reflecting the couple’s long-standing commitment to supporting students and strengthening programs central to the college’s mission.
This time, they said, they hope to strengthen the college’s ability to respond quickly as needs shift and to model how shared giving can expand what is possible, advancing priorities tied to student access and faculty and research excellence.
Supporting scholarship when funding is uncertain
Flexible funding, Lang said, makes it possible to respond quickly when needs arise. The College of the Liberal Arts Research Fund provides discretionary support to be directed to needs such as faculty projects, travel, technology needed for scholarly work, or wages for staff and faculty contributing to that work.
Hamer emphasized the importance of this kind of support for faculty launching their careers in an unpredictable funding landscape. She said she often sees how uncertainty falls on junior faculty in particular.
“It can be difficult,” Hamer said. “They’re just getting started, trying to build a life’s work without knowing what support will be there from one year to the next.”
“Because of its built-in flexibility, the College of the Liberal Arts Research Fund allows our office to step in at critical stages in the life of a research program. The fund can, for example, offer seed support for late-breaking projects or provide a backstop when funding is disrupted, such as when grants are terminated unexpectedly,” said Debbie Hawhee, acting associate dean for research and graduate studies. “This kind of gift is extremely high impact dollar-for-dollar, and I hope it inspires future visionary giving.”
Strengthening WGSS support for students
The second half of the commitment will support the Hamer-Lang WGSS Support Fund, a student program and student support fund that strengthens the undergraduate and graduate student experience in the department. The fund reflects WGSS themes of social justice, cultural identity and intersectional understandings of gender and lived experience.
At the discretion of the department head, expenditures may include programming support; honoraria for visiting scholars and lecturers; support for student conference participation; and emergency assistance for individual students in need, including students from historically underrepresented racial, ethnic, gender and sexuality backgrounds.
Hamer described WGSS as both an academic home and a campus resource that encourages students to think critically about racial and ethnic oppression, sexism, transphobia, ableism, and injustice more broadly. Students, she said, benefit from opportunities to explore differences, imagine a fairer and more just world, and understand their agency as future researchers, teachers and leaders in a global society.
“The Hamer-Lang WGSS Support Fund is perfectly timed to reinforce and elevate critical work in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies,” Hawhee said. “WGSS faculty and students are doing vital work on justice and inclusivity, and this support reflects a meaningful commitment to work that always matters and that feels especially urgent today.”
Hamer said she hopes the fund will help WGSS sustain accessible, collaborative programming that reaches undergraduates, graduate students, and the wider community.
“It’s about creating programs and events that students can take part in and learn from,” she said, “and extending that work beyond campus when we can.”
A commitment to shared giving
The commitment to community shared by Hamer and Lang extends beyond the academic setting. On campus and in the community, they are familiar faces in spaces that bring students together and encourage dialogue; their involvement spans the Paul Robeson Cultural Center, the Student Black Caucus, the Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity, and community events such as State College Pride and Juneteenth.
They have long supported the college philanthropically, and, they said, when they decided to formalize these new funds, payroll deduction helped make the commitment feel practical and sustainable, turning a larger goal into something they could build toward over time. The couple said they hope the approach also underscores the power of shared investment, that when many people each give what they can, it can expand what’s possible for students and faculty.
“It doesn’t have to take much,” Lang said. “If everyone thinks about what they have the capacity to do, then no one entity or individual must try and do it all. It mattered to me that people see I’m not just asking them to give. I’m doing it, too.”
To contribute to the College of the Liberal Arts Research Fund or the Hamer-Lang WGSS Support Fund, contact Lydell Sargeant, senior director of development, at lrs197@psu.edu.
Gifts like the College of the Liberal Arts Research Fund and the Hamer-Lang WGSS Support Fund advance the University’s historic land-grant mission to serve and lead. Through philanthropy, alumni and friends are helping students to join the Penn State family and prepare for lifelong success; driving research, outreach and economic development that grow our shared strength and readiness for the future; and increasing the University’s impact for families, patients and communities across the commonwealth and around the world. Learn more by visiting raise.psu.edu.