Founded in 1968, Town & Gown at Chapman University is a group of community members, business leaders, alumni, parents and grandparents of Chapman students, Chapman faculty and staff, and other friends of the university, all committed to fostering a collegial spirit integrating the campus into the surrounding community, as well as providing scholarships for deserving students. For a number of years, Town & Gown has focused some of its generous gifting on the Leatherby Libraries, donating both funds and books to our collections. In honor of their yearly gifts and to celebrate the town & Gown Endowment for Arts, Humanities, and Social Science, we’ve honored them with the Town & Gown Reading Alcove on the 2nd floor, in the Donna Ford and Fahmy Attallah, Ph.D. Library of Arts and Humanities. We also celebrate them each year with a reception, toasting to another excellent year, and give them the chance to see the books they’ve added to our collections.

Several people in the foreground sit with their backs to the camera. A woman in the background faces the camera, holding up a book.

Dean Charlene Baldwin shows off one of the books donated to the Leatherby Libraries by Town & Gown in 2018-2019.

This past June, Dean of the Leatherby Libraries Charlene Baldwin joined Town & Gown in the Center for American War Letters Archives on the lower level of the Leatherby Libraries, toasting to their generosity with champagne and cake. This year’s Town & Gown endowment provided nearly $1500 in funds enabling the purchase of eleven new books, bringing the total of books donated by Town & Gown to 173! The books donated to the Leatherby Libraries by Town & Gown in the 2018-2019 school year came from a range of humanities, arts, and social sciences topics, and included titles such as Double Negative: The Black Image & Popular Culture, and Why Religion and Spirituality Matters for Public Health: Evidence, Implications, and Resources.

Town and Gown Bibliography 2019

Many thanks again to the members of Town & Gown for their fantastic generosity to the Leatherby Libraries and to Chapman University as a whole!