Anica Donnan Rawnsley taught school as a young adult, and while she never attended Washington & Jefferson College, she developed an affinity for the place early on through family members who enrolled there and graduated.

Now, months after her passing, she has made gift of approximately $50 million to W&J — the biggest in its 242-year history and one of the largest to a liberal arts college ever in the U.S., officials said Wednesday.

It will support need-based scholarships for students from the Washington area to attend W&J. Rawnsley died Aug. 9, 2023, at 94.

Born in 1929, she was raised in Washington, Pa. At the time, W&J was an all-male college. It became coed in 1970.

She graduated instead from Goucher College and later earned a master’s degree in education from Bank Street College of Education, officials said. She became W&J’s first female trustee in 1975.

“Anica Rawnsley … believed passionately in the life-changing power of education,” said W&J President John C. Knapp. “She had a bold vision to make it possible for future generations to afford and benefit from a W&J education.”

Knapp said Rawnsley’s gift will allow W&J to invest millions of dollars annually in the people of its community and region.

“It was a privilege to know Anica and her passion for providing students in this area with an education of exceptional quality at a cost within their families’ reach,” Knapp said.

Her family members who passed through W&J included her father, John H. Donnan (1900); her stepfather, H. Gilmore Schmidt (1930); her two grandfathers, John White Donnan (1866) and H.P. Chambers (1881); and two uncles, Alvan E. Donnan (1909) and Smith N. Whitworth (1911).

W&J was founded in 1781.

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