The Light Foundation and Wells College
Loss of a half million dollars a year in student support
anticipated as a result of the Board’s decision
to make Wells a coeducational institution
When Richard Upjohn Light died in 1994, he left an endowment valued at $7.2 million to be managed by the Richard U. Light Foundation to benefit Wells College.
At that time, it was the largest gift in the college’s history.
Light’s endowment was set up to support scholarships in honor of his friends, Paisley Ball Butler ’28 and Adelaide Ball Kirby ’34. He called on these sisters while they were students at Wells, and is reported to have landed his plane on Cayuga Lake.
Dr. Light was a pioneer neurosurgeon and aviator, an avid cinematographer, and the president of the American Geographical Society. Born in 1902, he flew around the world by seaplane, flew down the length of South America, across the Atlantic, and up the length of Africa. From 1937-1968, he was a director of the Upjohn Company, the pharmaceuticals company founded by his grandfather.
By 2003, the endowment he left Wells College had grown to over $14 million. That year it provided $500,000 in annual scholarship support to students of Wells College.
The January 1996 Express reported on the Light endowment that “Wells will receive income from this gift... as long as the college remains a single-sex institution.”
In conversations with students and alumnae in recent months, President Ryerson confirmed that Wells College will lose the entire Light Foundation endowment and all of its annual income by becoming a coeducational institution.
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