A $25 million donation from the Carlos Alvarez Foundation is establishing the Carlos Alvarez School of Arts and Humanities, according to Trinity’s announcement on Sept. 26. In an exclusive interview with the Trinitonian, Trinity President Vanessa Beasley said that the donation will implement an endowed dean position, endowed professorships, humanities scholarships and provide new research and internship opportunities to undergraduate students. Ruben Dupertuis, current dean of the School of Arts and Humanities, will be the dean of the Alvarez school.
The Alvarez Foundation set aside $5 million of their donation for scholarships. Trinity will match that gift with another $5 million from the university’s endowment fund, Beasley said.
The late Carlos Alvarez, founder of the Gambrinus Company, helped fund the Mexico, the Americas and Spain (MAS) program in 2005. The program provides Trinity students with the opportunity to study and engage with life and cultures from Latin America and Spain. MAS helps students afford studying abroad with scholarships.
“What’s exciting about this is it’s very important to the Alvarez family that students, especially students who cannot afford international travel, have support for those opportunities,” Beasley said.
This commitment to helping students afford to experience new cultures, which was important to Carlos Alvarez, continued with this new donation to Trinity, according to Beasley. The money included for an endowed term professorship will allow the university to have a specific position for a distinguished faculty member.
“It gives us the ability to say, here’s a famous author, and maybe they want to come to Trinity for two to three years,” Beasley said.
The Alvarez Foundation has supported other schools throughout the San Antonio area, donating $20 million to UT San Antonio’s business school. John Brozovich, son-in-law of Carlos Alvarez and CEO of the Gambrinus Company, said that Alvarez had remained committed to education and the liberal arts throughout his life. Brozovich has been a member of the Trinity University Board of Trustees since 2023.
“The gift is being made to honor my late father-in-law, Carlos Alvarez,” Brozovich said. “The arts and humanities were very, very meaningful to him. He saw it as something that allows individuals to pursue self-inquiry, to better understand themselves and learn how to communicate with one another.”
Before his passing, Alvarez met with students who participated in the MAS program, hearing what they had learned while abroad. Beasley said that while students were not directly involved in deciding how to distribute the donation, student input helped the Alvarez Foundation staff and university administrators distribute funds according to student needs.
“In a way, there were focus groups built in for 20 years of listening to students’ experiences,” Beasley said.
Alexis Ibarra, senior political science, Spanish and global Latinx studies triple-major, participated in the MAS program, studying abroad with the program twice — in Monterrey, Mexico and through the Trinity in Spain program — and learning from the MAS Leadership Development course. MAS’s Crossing Borders endowment supported Ibarra to study abroad. Ibarra said that while Alvarez died before he got to share his study abroad experiences, students would tell the Trinity donor how their experiences abroad affected them at an annual reception.
Two out of three of Ibarra’s majors are outside of the School of Arts and Humanities, but regardless, he said he was supportive of the gift. Ibarra said that the arts and humanities are in need of support, and this donation will help to ensure that Trinity’s liberal arts students continue to provide diverse opportunities for students.
“I came to Trinity because we are not following that national trend,” Beasley said.
Beasley said she was concerned about the national trend of moving away from investing in the humanities and ignoring the values of a well-rounded education, no matter what field one might be studying.
