Image of Karla Scherer

Karla Scherer, Chairman

The Karla Scherer Foundation, with the University of Chicago, provides support for The Karla Scherer Center for the Study of American Culture. In addition to supporting innovative graduate education and research on American Culture across the University of Chicago, the Foundation underwrites two dissertation fellowships each year, among the highest granted annually within the University's Division of the Humanities. An endowment has also been established to support and maintain a professorship in the Division of the Humanities, the Karla Scherer Professorship in American Culture.

To learn more about The Karla Scherer Center for the Study of American Culture and its programs, please visit http://americanculture.uchicago.edu.

Established in 1989 as the result of a successful proxy contest waged by Karla Scherer for control of the company her father founded in 1930, the Foundation initially supported women at both the undergraduate and graduate levels as they pursued degrees in Economics or Finance at schools worldwide. In 2003 the focus was changed to support women studying the Humanities at the graduate level, specifically at the University of Chicago where Karla Scherer received her MA in 1999. It was through her research for her Master's thesis that Scherer realized the need for a Center for American Culture at the University of Chicago.