SBU News

For every dollar donated to The Bonaventure Fund, 37 cents is directly routed to Education Instruction and Academic Support. Through this important support, we are able to maintain an unwavering commitment to academic excellence.  

The mission of St. Bonaventure University is Becoming Extraordinary. To make this mission a reality for all students, the university focuses on supporting the faculty and their academic programs. 

In today's economic climate, our faculty are keenly aware that it is not enough to provide a middle-of-the-road educational experience. The Bonaventure Fund allows us to help our faculty go beyond the ordinary, to maintain our high standards, and to deliver an education that can only be described as "extraordinary." 

MEET CAROL FISCHER, associate dean for the School of business and professor of accounting. Dr. Fischer graduated from St. Bonaventure University in 1980 and returned as a faculty member in 1985. 

As a student, she received a small scholarship - through support of The Bonaventure Fund - without which she could not have attended Bona's.
  

As a faculty member, Dr. Fischer frequently attends academic conferences (along with many of her fellow professors) to develop technical or teaching skills or to present academic papers. 

Support of The Bonaventure Fund enables the University's teaching community to stay up to date in their respective fields. It also brings guest speakers to campus and helps support new student organizations. 

"The Bonaventure Fund is the foundation of donor opportunities to help the University," states Dr. Fischer. 

Your support of The Bonaventure Fund ensures that students are afforded everything they would expect from their college experience, as well as the extra opportunities necessary to make their time here truly special. Your support impacts lives, shapes futures, and helps students as they are becoming extraordinary. 

Here are just a few examples of recent efforts to enhance the academic experience from within. 

• History faculty attended a two-day virtual workshop on digital pedagogical and research tools pertaining to digital history. 
• Four students and two faculty members from the Department of Psychology attended the annual conference of the Eastern Psychological Association in Pittsburgh. 
• Twelve experts in various fields such as nuclear science and computer science presented to students and faculty in the School of Arts and Sciences. 

Friedsam Memorial Library: home of "a unique national asset" 

Friedsam Memorial Library is home to more than 325,000 titles, 11,500 reference titles, and more than 35,000 electronic serial titles. The library has also been a selective depository of U.S. federal documents since 1937.

St. Bonaventure has developed the best research-based collection on the Franciscan Order in the Americas, a collection that can only be matched by four libraries in Europe. The collection was developed in large part through the teaching and research of the Franciscan Institute.

The rare book collection, consisting of some 10,000 volumes, is housed in Holy Name Library for the Franciscan Institute, a state-of-the-art, climate-controlled addition to Friedsam that opened in 2008. The collection, mainly printed items produced in the 16th and 18th centuries, has been described by the National Endowment for the Humanities as "a unique national asset of great value to American humanistic scholarship."

Among the volumes are almost 300 of the earliest examples of printed books in Europe (known as incunabula, or books printed from about 1450 to 1500), and manuscripts dating back to the 12th century.