The Graduate Center has achieved a reputation for excellence on a par with the oldest and most elite private universities and takes pride in its ability to offer the best in higher education to a diverse student body. While support comes primarily from government monies, private contributions are critical to maintain excellence in virtually every aspect of academic life.

Your contribution will allow the Graduate Center to recruit and retain the finest scholars, provide essential student support, strengthen the resources of academic programs, research centers and institutes, and the library, and finance numerous other activities. Your gift will also allow the Graduate Center to respond quickly to unmet needs and new opportunities.
All gifts are made through the Graduate Center Foundation, Inc., established in 1983 as a private 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization responsible for raising funds and managing and investing donations to be used for the Graduate Center. All gifts made through the Foundation are fully tax-deductible.

The Graduate Center is a remarkable community of scholars. Our students come from ninety countries to study with one of the world's most distinguished faculties. Like our students, our faculty members are international in orientation. Their scholarship is recognized and honored around the globe. Because our primary focus is doctoral education, the relationship of faculty and students is as intense as it is collegial. Together they advance the transnational exchange of ideas.

This global purview is rooted in a profound commitment to the local. Here doctoral education proceeds from the system in which it is embedded. Our faculty members are drawn from every branch of The City University of New York. They bring with them to our seminar rooms the experience of teaching the most heterogeneous undergraduate population in the world. Our doctoral students teach more than 175,000 of those students annually. Like their mentors, they are shaped by classroom encounters at City College, at Brooklyn, at Queens, at Hostos, at LaGuardia, and at Medgar Evers.

City University's commitment to excellence and access is the standard under which we march. Our goal is to align those twin aspirations, to demonstrate that they are one and the same. We stand in the midst of a constant flow of ideas and practice intimately informed by an understanding of what it means to be a public university, of what is required to draw consensus form divergent interests.

For us, the commonweal compels more than lip service. It is the basis of our judgment, the foundation of our belief. From its founding moments, The Graduate Center has served as a bridge between the academy and an enlightened citizenry. In our research, our teaching, and our public programs we provide a forum for examining the critical issues of today and a crucible in which to identify and address the problems and opportunities that will confront us tomorrow.

This commitment to the public interest indelibly marks the research we produce. The motto of the Graduate School is "Scholarship for an Urban World." That formulation describes an inflection rather than a subject or a bias, a belief that the world is complex, unstable, dynamic. Scholarship that charts this world registers, of course, the multicultural and the multidisciplinary, but it does something more. The work that emerges from The Graduate Center takes as a given the essential character of new sight lines. We think differently because we see differently. That altered vision is highly particular but entirely consistent with the most universal understandings of scholarship's primary tasks: to retain and to restore what has been and to imagine what might be.

In this gift of sight we are blessed, and it is that blessing which we seek to cultivate and to extend. I am proud to lead this institution, to have access to its excellence, and to the multiple angles of vision provides at every turn.

William P. Kelly
President,
The Graduate Center of
the City University of New York

If you are experiencing difficulties with making gifts online, please contact 212-817-7130.

For nearly half a century, the Graduate Center has given the opportunity for doctoral education to some of the nation’s and the world’s brightest and most talented students and generated research and scholarship in areas of growing consequence to society. Through our public programs, we have provided public access to the world of ideas and brought New Yorkers a wealth of stimulating lectures and discussions and a rich schedule of music, art, and theater. To sustain the quality of academic programs that now rank among the nation’s best, enable talented graduate students of modest means to pursue their education, and underwrite our public programs, we count on our Annual Fund. Gifts to the fund go to meet our most urgent needs and enable us to remain a leader in doctoral education and continue delivering to our students and our city all that they deserve.

Please consider a gift to the Annual Fund.

The Marilyn Jacobs Gittell Chair honors the legacy of Marilyn Jacobs Gittell, a Political Scientist who was passionate about cities, urban politics and public policy. Professor Gittell was centrally interested in democracy and how the strength of democracy depended on its ability to adapt to social change and incorporate groups that lack political power.  During a more than fifty-year career, Professor Gittell trained scores of students to critically analyze urban politics and policy and to seek effective and responsive public policy to reduce inequalities and strengthen democracy.

Make a gift in support of the Marilyn Gittell Chair

If you are among our leadership donors, making a gift of $1,000 or more to the Annual Fund, you will be recognized as a member of the President's Alliance. Your gift, and your involvement with the Graduate Center, will be acknowledged in a number of ways throughout the year. Because you are a leader of the community, your gift as a vote of confidence in the Graduate Center will inspire others to take notice and to give as generously as they can.

Yes, I want to join the President's Alliance of the Annual Fund. >

In the tradition of great public institutions, the Graduate Center has achieved its remarkable status in the world of scholarship supported primarily by government monies. However, it can do more for its students and faculty, the community, and the nation. As the Graduate Center approaches its 50th anniversary, it is entering a new phase in its development. It seeks to strengthen its resources for scholarship, and to play an even greater role in examining and defining the national agenda. Private contributions such as yours can mean so much in achieving these goals.

The Graduate Center has established giving societies to recognize its most generous donors. If you make a gift of $1,000 or more to the Annual Fund, you will become a member of the President's Alliance. Your gift and your involvement with the Graduate Center will be acknowledged in a number of ways throughout the year, and invitations to special occasions will allow you to become more fully engaged with the academic community.

As a member of the President's Alliance, you are a leader of the academic community. Other individuals, and even institutions, will view your gift as a vote of confidence in the Graduate Center's goals for the future.

Your gift can have an impact far beyond what you imagine.

Your generosity could inspire others to give.

Yes, I want to join the President's Alliance of the Annual Fund. >

Gifts for the President's Alliance are acknowledged at the following levels:

For additional information about making a gift to the Graduate Center, please contact:

Linda Merians
The Graduate Center
The City University of New York
365 Fifth Avenue
Room 8204.08
New York, NY 10016
Phone: 1-212-817-7130
Email: develop@gc.cuny.edu

Gifts to the Graduate Center’s music program support scholarship, research, and a wealth of free and low-cost public performances—recitals, concerts, and special presentations of music from around the world—as well as lectures and panel discussions. Ranked among the nation’s top ten, the music program boasts a stellar faculty, including Pulitzer Prize-winning composers and celebrated concert artists. It grants Ph.D. degrees in musicology and doctor of musical arts (DMA) degrees in performance and composition. Its popular Elebash Presents Music in Midtown series of free hour-long midday chamber-music concerts features outstanding professional musicians from the program’s faculty and student body at the warm, intimate, acoustically rich Baisley Powell Elebash Recital Hall. This elegant venue also boasts an impressive schedule of performances by guest artists, student groups and the music’s program’s resident ensemble.

To join Friends of Music >

Friends of the Library facilitate the mission of the Mina Rees Library by providing funding for print and electronic acquisitions, as well as for the preservation and maintenance of the library's holdings, facilities, and equipment. As a patron, you will receive invitations to events sponsored by the Friends of the Library and your gift will strengthen our collections, preserve them for future generations, and ensure that the Mina Rees Library offers the most advanced resources to students and faculty.

To join Friends of the Library >

Amazon Affiliate Program

Purchase anything through Amazon.com’s Mina Rees Library link to contribute 5%  to the library. It costs you nothing and adds thousands to the library budget.

Purchase through our “Virtual Bookstore” at Amazon.com

The James Gallery, a museum-quality space on the main floor of the Graduate Center with windows fronting Fifth Avenue, annually presents five or six exhibitions of artworks in all media. The exhibitions, lectures, and other activities of the James Gallery encompass a spectrum of scholarly interests, offer doctoral students the opportunity to gain valuable curatorial experience, and contribute to the cultural life of New York.

Your gift as a member of the Gallery Associates entitles you to an array of benefits including invitations to opening receptions and private gallery talks. Gallery Associates' gifts help support special exhibitions that enhance the teaching mission of the gallery and enrich the City's cultural landscape.

To join The Gallery Associates >

Your gift may be directed to many special purposes such as: scholarships that provide access to graduate education for students of modest means; salary enhancements for the most talented faculty; funds for faculty and student research and travel; support for students or faculty in a particular discipline, program, center, or institute; funding for distinguished visiting professorships; support for programs designed to serve New York City; and underwriting support for lectures, conferences, concerts, theater, and other public programs.

Make your gift in memory of J. Bruce Llewellyn here. >

Make your gift to a particular department here. >
Make your gift to a particular center or institute here. >

If you are interested in learning more about the special needs of the Graduate Center and about how you can help, please contact Institutional Advancement.