The Scandling Family Legacy

“Education is key to the success of individuals and to the future strength of this country,” says William Scandling, the co-founder and retired president of Saga Corporation, which grew from a small institutional food services business into a major national corporation that was purchased in 1986 by Marriott Corp. With his late wife, Margaret Warner Scandling, Bill Scandling shared a deep concern about the future of education in this country.

“Both Margaret and I came from families that taught us a sense of responsibility toward others,” Scandling says. “Providing opportunities for individuals to go as far as their abilities will take them is a way to fulfill that sense of obligation.”

Scandling’s particular interest in the activities and prospects of Rochester’s Graduate School of Education and Human Development was fostered by ties that his late wife, Margaret Warner Scandling, had developed with the school.

Mrs. Scandling, a Rochester native and member of Rochester’s Class of 1944, came from a family deeply committed to education. A favorite aunt, Frederica Warner, had graduated from the University of Rochester in 1909. Afterward, Ms. Warner taught English in the high schools of New York City until her retirement in 1951, when she returned to Rochester, staying there until her death in 1970. Margaret Scandling herself became an educational advocate in the later 1960’s, supporting a wide spectrum of youth-oriented charities and educational foundations, including one that funded “unbudgeted” projects that teachers in primary and secondary schools wished to undertake on behalf of their students.

She was elected to the Trustees’ Council in 1969, then served on the Board of Trustees of the University. In these roles, Mrs. Scandling came to know a great deal about the work of the Graduate School of Education and Human Development, and shared with her family the belief that the school had a unique and vital mission among education schools.

Before her death in 1990, Mr. and Mrs. Scandling made several generous gifts to the Education School, among them an endowment that would create a professorship in the name of Margaret’s aunt, Frederica Warner, and gifts to establish scholarships that would support students of the Education School.

In 1993, Mr. Scandling honored the memory of his wife by making a multimillion-dollar gift that would strengthen the research programs of the school, increase the school’s ability to give scholarship support to the nation’s most promising doctoral students in education, and establish professorships to attract nationally recognized senior faculty.

“Margaret and I had always worked together as a team on important decisions. She was very bright, had great determination and an excellent sense of humor, and she made our life together as successful as it was,” Scandling says. “After she died, I wanted to continue doing things that were important to her, and supporting the school was one of them. I thought it would be a fitting way to remember her.”

Mr. Scandling has continued to honor his late wife through his generous support and thoughtful friendship and counsel to the Warner School’s deans. Additional contributions in the 1990s included a challenge grant by which he contributed $1 million as a match to an additional $1 million from other donors.

The legacy of involvement on the part of the Scandling Family continues through son Michael Scandling, who serves on the Warner School’s Dean’s Advisory Committee. His special passion is early literacy, and he has supported a project to bring best practices in literacy education life in film. Michael finds hope and promise in the Warner School approach to teaching and learning. He looks to a day when “future generations are not only literate but have the depth and breadth of education to be able to think incisively and independently.”

In 2001, William Scandling, who married Yvette Farquharson-Oliver in 1996, again saw an opportunity to make an even more direct impact on education and supported the creation of the Warner Center for Professional Development and Education Reform. The Center, which has attracted over $10 million to support local school reform projects, works in partnership with local schools to help make meaningful change that improves teaching and learning.

“There is no doubt that the Scandling Family’s commitment to education, vision for what a school of education could be, and strategic investments to help shape and ensure the Warner School’s financial stability have been transformative,” says Dean Raffaella Borasi.

“It is hard to imagine what the School might be like now, were it not for their generosity. There is no doubt in my mind that the Scandling gifts have touched the future – they have changed the culture of schools in the Rochester community and the lives of countless educators and children.”