Alum funds chair in English Department

BY B.J. ALMOND
Rice News staff

Rice alum Lawrence Guffey ’90 and his wife, Lucy Mackilligin Guffey, have made a significant gift to the Centennial Campaign to establish the Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English.

	LAWRENCE GUFFEY

“It’s important for Rice to continue to develop its Humanities program,” said Guffey, who graduated magna cum laude with a double major in English and managerial studies and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. “I want to make sure that the School of Humanities is every bit as strong as the other schools at Rice.”

Now based in London, Guffey is senior managing director of private equity for the Blackstone Group, one of the world’s leading investment and advisory firms. Since joining Blackstone in 1991, he has led the firm’s efforts in all media and communications-related investments and currently oversees the firm’s European business.

“I believe that people who have been lucky enough to be successful should remember the people and institutions that helped them along the way,” said the former Hanszen College resident. “I had a wonderful experience at Rice. It gave me a broadly based foundation across humanities, math, computer science, psychology and other disciplines, and it all ended up being very useful.”

Guffey feels an obligation to give back to the arts, especially literature. He serves as a director of the prestigious Paris Review, which publishes original fiction and poetry. He also serves as a member of Rice’s Humanities Advisory Board — a role that influenced his decision to endow a chair.

He named the chair in honor of his mother, who retired as head of the English Department at the Bryn Mawr School in Baltimore. “She instilled my love of reading and literature,” he said.

The Guffeys prefer that the amount of their gift remain confidential, but they specified that it benefit the English Department.

“Larry and Lucy’s passion for literature will help the School of Humanities strengthen the Department of English, and we are very appreciative of their generosity,” President David Leebron said. “It is gratifying to see that our graduates recognize the importance of their liberal arts education and the essential role that the humanities play in developing our most critical faculties.”

Helena Michie, the Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor in Humanities and professor and chair of English, said she is grateful for the Guffeys’ support, especially at a time when the effects of the economic downturn are still being felt. “It will be a privilege for the English Department to consider how to best use this gift and to be able to make concrete plans for the department’s intellectual and pedagogical future,” she said.