Written by Judith Schwartzstein, Director of Public Affairs, Sarah Lawrence College

Mar. 4, 2015: Sarah Lawrence College announced that prominent alumna Barbara Walters, noted broadcast journalist and author, together with her charitable trust, has made a gift of $15 million to establish The Barbara Walters Campus Center on the historic college's campus.

The gift represents the largest single donation in the college's 89-year history and comes as the college prepares to enter the public phase of a capital campaign.

The Barbara Walters Campus Center, a multi-use building that will serve as the hub of student life and campus community, will bring together aspects of student engagement and day-to-day social and intellectual experiences.

The building will feature adaptable social and academic spaces, a venue suitable for large public events, lounges, dining facilities, the college's radio station, a media innovation lab, and areas for career services, student clubs, activities, and collaborative work.

In addition, it will permanently house the Barbara Walters Archives (which will include edited video interviews, edited transcripts, and personal letters from the notable subjects of her interviews), which Walters announced in May of 2014 that she was donating to the college, and the Barbara Walters Gallery, currently housed in the college's Heimbold Visual Arts Center.

"The Barbara Walters Campus Center will stand as a tribute to Barbara Walters and her belief in the power of a Sarah Lawrence education," said President Karen R. Lawrence in making the announcement. "This remarkable woman has changed the face of broadcast news by establishing her unique genre of the investigative, long-form interview. She is a powerful role model for our students, and we deeply appreciate her generosity, her vision, and her many contributions to the college. This transformative gift will enable us to create a powerful magnet on campus--gathering spaces large and small--in which community will flourish at Sarah Lawrence College."

"When I donated my archives to Sarah Lawrence last year, I told the graduating class at commencement that at Sarah Lawrence I learned to ask questions," said Walters. "I attribute my success, in many ways, to the curiosity and confidence I came away with from this remarkable college. Today I am pleased to be able to make The Barbara Walters Campus Center a reality for future generations of Sarah Lawrence students."

"One of the hallmarks of the Sarah Lawrence campus is the convergence of living and learning," said dean of the college Jerrilynn D. Dodds. "This is a college where students and their teachers extend their intellectual discourse beyond the classroom, hampered only by the limited number of common spaces. The new campus center will provide a venue for an even greater degree of this expression of the college's unique approach to learning."

Barbara Walters may have interviewed more statesmen and stars than any other journalist in history. Among them are Russia's Boris Yeltsin, China's Jiang Zemin, Great Britain's Margaret Thatcher, Libya's Moammar Qadaffi, and Iraq's Saddam Hussein. She was also the first American journalist to interview Vladimir Putin and the first to interview President and Mrs. Bush following 9/11. She has interviewed every American president and first lady since Richard Nixon, and she made journalism history by arranging the first joint interview with Egypt's President Anwar Sadat and Israel's Prime Minister Menachem Begin in November of 1977.

Pictured here: Barbara Walters.

Photo courtesy Judith Schwartzstein, Director of Public Affairs, Sarah Lawrence College