{"id":171838,"date":"2026-04-21T13:29:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T13:29:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/171838\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T13:29:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T13:29:10","slug":"temple-plans-to-expand-its-honors-college-following-major-donation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/171838\/","title":{"rendered":"Temple plans to expand its honors college following major donation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Love Philly? So do we. Let\u2019s be friends.\u00a0Sign up for the Billy Penn newsletter today<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A new donation will help Temple University expand its honors program into a full college, something leaders hope will make the North Philadelphia public university more competitive with other schools in the area.<\/p>\n

Temple announced the gift from alums Jane Creamer Sullivan and her late husband, Thomas J. Sullivan, last week. A news release called the donation \u201cone of the largest in Temple\u2019s history,<\/a>\u201d but did not disclose an amount.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The new Jane Creamer Sullivan and Thomas J. Sullivan Honors College is set to accept its first group of students in fall 2027. Students will be enrolled at another one of Temple\u2019s colleges alongside the new honors college.<\/p>\n

The program\u2019s development is part of Temple\u2019s strategic plan, unveiled earlier this year<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When David Boardman, dean of the Klein College of Media and Communication, began working on the plan, he knew funding would be a major priority.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Around that time, Jane Sullivan, already a longtime donor to Temple, told him she and her husband planned to include Klein College in their will. That\u2019s when Boardman pitched another idea, helping create what would become the Sullivan Honors College.<\/p>\n

\u201cHer desires for how to use her money and our needs for an honors college [were] a really exciting match,\u201d Boardman said. \u201cWe got talking about that and at some point, Jane got very excited about helping us build this honors college, and the rest is history.\u201d<\/p>\n

The honors program at Temple currently enrolls about 2,100 undergraduate students and has produced students who have earned prestigious honors like Fulbright, Goldwater and Truman scholarships. But Boardman said its resources and visibility have been relatively limited. Temple\u2019s main competitors \u2014 Penn State, the University of Pittsburgh, Drexel University and Syracuse University \u2014 all have honors colleges. Boardman said Temple has been at a \u201cdisadvantage\u201d and a named college will help them compete with other area institutions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The college will differ from others as admission will not rely solely on a student\u2019s GPA or test scores. While scores will be taken into consideration, Boardman said the admissions team will be taking a more holistic look at leadership, motivation and what obstacles those students have had to overcome.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s their potential?\u201d he emphasized. Students can be admitted to the college throughout their academic career, instead of during the initial enrollment cycle.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The college will also utilize Temple\u2019s global campuses in Tokyo, Kyoto and Rome. Philadelphia will play a central role in the curriculum as students will have the opportunity to participate in research, service learning and mentorship from local experts and alumni.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Boardman said the \u201ccore ethos\u201d of the college will be collaboration over competition, and the curriculum will be structured around \u201cworking across the fault lines of race and gender and class and interest and discipline.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the gift from Sullivan will help to build the infrastructure and hire staff for the college, funding for scholarships and stipends is still needed. Boardman hopes that other donors will step in to help.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Boardman says it\u2019s already starting to generate more interest from prospective students.<\/p>\n

\u201cI got an email forwarded to me from a parent who said, \u2018Congratulations on creating the honors college. Our daughter will be a freshman in fall 2027, and Temple just moved up her list,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Over the next year, faculty, staff, students and alumni will meet to discuss the development of the college.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Love Philly? So do we. Let\u2019s be friends.\u00a0Sign up for the Billy Penn newsletter today. A new donation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":171839,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1594,227,77085,77086,69,71,70,77087,10869,77088],"class_list":{"0":"post-171838","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-college","9":"tag-education","10":"tag-jane-creamer-sullivan","11":"tag-klein-college","12":"tag-philadelphia","13":"tag-philadelphia-headlines","14":"tag-philadelphia-news","15":"tag-sullivan-honors-college","16":"tag-temple-university","17":"tag-thomas-j-sullivan"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171838\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}