Fine Foundation Gives $500,000 to Support Stevenson’s New Performing Arts Center
Stevenson University is pleased to announce a gift in support of the new campus Performing Arts Center. The $500,000 gift from the Beverly K. and Jerome M. Fine Foundation was made possible by the foundation’s trustees, Louis and Phyllis Friedman. The lobby of the Performing Arts Center will be named in honor of the Fines. Construction on the new facility will begin in 2024.
Planning is now underway for Stevenson’s Performing Arts Center. The facility will be located adjacent to the university’s new Philip A. Zaffere Library and will join the Manning Academic Center and the School of Design, Arts, and Communication as part of Stevenson’s North campus academic hub. The Center will serve the university’s Theatre and Media Performance program students, providing a new venue for stage productions. In addition, the Center will have performance and rehearsal space for music, dance, and other fine arts events and activities. The Center will include a black box theater, scene shop, music performance stage, and support spaces.
“Louis and Phyllis Friedman have been great supporters of Stevenson and our students,” said Elliot Hirshman, President of Stevenson University. “Their friendship has been truly transformational for our campus and has enhanced many aspects of Stevenson’s educational experience, from the sciences to the construction of our new Philip A. Zaffere Library. We are very grateful for the many ways that the Friedmans have supported the academic and career aspirations of our students.”
Louis and Phyllis Friedman are both attorneys in the law offices of Friedman & Friedman LLP, specializing in estate planning, corporate law, taxation, real estate and business transactions, and mergers and acquisitions. Louis graduated from the University of Maryland School of Law and, in 2016, was selected as a Super Lawyer by Baltimore Magazine in the field of estate planning. Phyllis Cole Friedman is a graduate of Goucher College, Tufts University, and the University of Maryland School of Law. She represents businesses and private foundations and retirement plans.
In 2016 the Friedmans, as trustees of the Beverly K. and Jerome M. Fine Foundation, pledged $2 million to name Stevenson’s School of the Sciences in honor of the late Beverly K. Fine and as a tribute the Fine’s daughter, Diane Fine Jacobs, who taught at Villa Julie College in the 1990s. In addition, the Friedmans were instrumental in securing the $2 million naming gift for the university’s Philip A. Zaffere Library. They also pledged $250,000 for Stevenson’s Emmert Hobbs Foundation SoLVE Center and, in 2017, established the Mary McCarthy-Cohen ’81 Scholarship Fund to support students in Stevenson’s Legal Studies program.
Learn more about Stevenson’s Performing Arts Center Project.