Lesley Malin, AB ’88, and Scott Helm, BSBA ’87, of Baltimore, have made a $1.35 million gift to support WashU’s annual summer theater program at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London, which is hosted by the Performing Arts Department (PAD) in Arts & Sciences.
The gift creates an endowed fund to assist participating students with financial need, including providing resources for tuition and program fees, as well as for airfare, meals and other expenses. The couple also made an additional gift of $60,000 to bolster the summer 2026 iteration.
“Shakespeare was perhaps the greatest humanist of all time,” said Malin, a founder and producing executive director of The Chesapeake Shakespeare Company, Maryland’s leading proponent of classic theater. “If you’re interested in understanding humanity, if you’re interested in becoming an empathetic person, there is no better way than to step into the shoes of the vast array of characters that Shakespeare created.”
The program will be renamed the Schvey-Spottiswoode Shakespeare’s Globe Program. The naming honors Henry Schvey, a professor emeritus and former chair of the PAD; and Patrick Spottiswoode, founder and retired director of Globe Education at Shakespeare’s Globe and a former visiting professor at WashU. Together, they founded the first-of-its-kind study-abroad opportunity in the early 1990s — even as the modern Globe building was still under construction.