Love of Liberal Arts Drives Professors’ Donation

Retired Sweet Briar professors Sue and Lee Piepho recently committed to a bequest of $1.5 million to the College. The endowed fund will support programs and facilities that have been part of the Piephos’ lives here for more than 40 years.

There’s the Lower Lake they used to swim in during the summers, and the campus gardens Sue adores. Part of the money is going toward preserving Sweet Briar’s natural and landscaped environment.

An avid gardener, Sue cultivates her love of nature in their home, as well. The Piephos’ living room is like a botanical garden, with a variety of plants climbing almost to the ceiling, and giant windows framing the greenery outside. The house, designed by local architect Hal Craddock in 1990, sits in a field above the lake. Local river stone embellishes the fireplace in the living room, which was built to face the fireplace in the historic boathouse.

While the connection between the two structures was Craddock’s idea, the Piephos put a lot of thought into the design of their home, as well. Making sure that it fit into the existing landscape was one important aspect. Utilizing its environment was another.

“[We wanted to] bring the outside in,” Sue explains, and she’s not just talking about plants. The living room windows face south, thus allowing for plenty of light and the use of solar energy. “The quarry tile and southern exposure of the solarium gives not only a delightful environment for my plants, but low energy bills in the winter. On a sunny day in mid-winter, the house gets warmer than our thermostat setting, and it is fun to feel like you are in the Caribbean on sunny days.”

All over the house, stacks of books rich with travel destinations, history and literature in foreign languages bear witness to the world outside of Sweet Briar. Not surprisingly, the Piephos have decided to reserve some of the endowment for international scholarships. It’s also a very personal connection: Their love story began at sea.

“We met on a boat going to Europe, between sophomore and junior years in college,” Sue says.

Sue stayed with a German family for six weeks to advance her knowledge of the German language, while Lee road-tripped across Europe in a Volkswagen convertible. They later met up in Paris and London.

“The experience in my case was transformative,” Lee says. “I learned a vast amount about people and cultures.” For Sue, this was her second time abroad; she spent ninth grade at the International School in Geneva, Switzerland, and traveled through Europe at that time.

The Piephos have since traveled to various places around the world, including Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Greece, Sweden, China, Central America, the Caribbean and the Middle East.

“We can appreciate how much you gain from going to another country, and I think you look at your country in a different way after you’ve been abroad for an extended period of time,” Sue says. “I think it’s an experience we want students to have — both foreign students coming here and Sweet Briar students going abroad.”

Another project dear to the Piephos’ hearts is the planned addition to Sweet Briar’s library. For many years, Cochran has served as an extension of Lee’s own library at home. A former English professor with a focus on Shakespeare and Renaissance culture, Lee still uses it frequently for his research, but also donates his own books to it.

“Historically, I’ve been a big supporter of the library,” he says. “It probably comes with the discipline. I’ve always thought that libraries have a special place. A library is and should be a cultural center of a college.”

Lee, who is the only professor to have won the Student Government Association’s Excellence in Teaching award twice, came to Sweet Briar in 1969 and retired from teaching in 2005 — two years before Sue stopped teaching chemistry.

When planning how to divide up the endowment, it was clear that the sciences should receive part of it, too. The discipline had grown up with the Piephos over the years.

http://sbc.edu/news/love-drives-donation