Elon University has received a $1 million gift to endow new religious and spiritual life programs on campus.
The gift by Douglas G. and Edna Truitt Noiles of New Canaan, Conn., will fund five new programs and seven internships, which will allow Elon students to explore a variety of religious and spiritual traditions and the spiritual dimensions of their lives and to make lifelong commitments to creating spiritually enriching communities. The program will be housed on campus in the new Vera Richardson Truitt Center for Religious and Spiritual Life. An earlier $100,000 scholarship donation by the Noiles brings their total gift to $1.1 million.
“This generous gift will greatly enhance Elon’s existing religious and spiritual life programs,” says Leo M. Lambert, Elon president. “The endowment provides new resources to support our mission of educating the mind, body, and spirit of all our students, and is a testament to Douglas and Edna Noiles’ strong faith and commitment to future generations.”
The Truitt Center will be named in memory of Edna Noiles’ mother, Vera Richardson Truitt, who raised her family in Alamance County and sent all six daughters to Elon.
“The driving forces in my mother’s life were faith in God and her belief in education,” says Edna Noiles, who graduated from Elon in 1944. “We have made this gift to Elon to support and enrich the University’s Religious and Spiritual Life program. We believe in Elon’s ecumenical and interfaith approach and feel it is important to support this effort. We want to make it possible for students to explore their own and other faith traditions and to live lives of reconciliation.”
Each spiritual life intern will receive a $2,000 stipend and a $1,000 grant to fund a study abroad experience. The interns will serve as student leaders of Elon’s weekly Chapel and vespers services as well as the five new programs in the Truitt Center. They will also work closely with Elon’s campus ministers and area clergy to plan and promote aspects of the overall program, meet regularly with Elon chaplains for spiritual renewal and participate in an annual retreat.
The five new programs in the Truitt Center will include:
- A spiritual leaders-in-residence program, which will bring religious leaders to campus to speak and meet with classes and student groups
- An interfaith speaker series featuring leaders of diverse religious traditions
- Retreats and workshops to help students focus on service for the common good and to identify core spiritual values at the center of their life choices
- Life skills and values workshops to help students make smooth transitions to life after college
- A study abroad course that will focus on important pilgrimage sites. The course will integrate academic learning about pilgrimages with students’ personal experience of pilgrimage. Each spiritual life intern will participate in this course.
The Noiles’ $100,000 gift supports the Ashton P. and Vera R. Truitt Scholarship Fund, which Edna Noiles established with her sisters in 1997 to honor their parents.
Edna Noiles is a former marriage and family counselor. From her earlier counseling practice Edna saw that the spiritual dimensions of life were being left out. She undertook serious study in a two-year program at the Shalem Institute of Spiritual Formation and for the past 13 years has been receiving and giving spiritual direction.
Douglas Noiles, a 1944 graduate of Worcester Polytechnic Institute, is co-founder and former executive vice president of Joint Medical Products Corp. of Stamford, Conn. He led the company’s technical efforts in the development of medical implants used in hip and knee replacements. He has been granted more than 100 patents.