Robert and Barbara Frick (Photo courtesy of WashU School of Arts and Sciences)

WashU received a $22 million donation to expand the Frick Initiatives, a fund fueling projects that encourage civic involvement. 

The donation and mission of the program comes from WashU alumnus Robert Frick, a former vice chairman at the board of Bank of America and a former member of the WashU Board of Trustees, and his wife Barbara. The Fricks are longtime supporters of the University; the Frick Forum inside the Olin Business School is named in honor of their $5 million donation to the building’s development. 

The program is centered around four pillars: civil discourse, free speech, free and open markets, and personal responsibility. The expanded initiative will fall under the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy. The pilot program first launched in 2023.

On the first day of classes, Chancellor Andrew D. Martin spoke at an event in the Emerson Auditorium announcing the expanded initiative with the Fricks in attendance. He framed the program as another part of WashU’s mission to produce civically engaged students.

“Here we say that a university exists to produce good citizens, people capable and eager to participate responsibly in a democracy,” Martin said. “People who don’t just vote every two or four years, but who understand the importance of engaging with their neighbors, weighing evidence honestly, changing their minds when the evidence calls for it, and, yes, staying in the room even when conversations get hard.”

Professor Andrew Reeves, the new director of the Frick Initiatives, referred to the program as a “sort of civic venture capital” and emphasized that they would seek out projects that can produce measurable results and be potentially scalable to other universities and communities.

“Every venture fund has an investment thesis. We invest in ideas that travel,” Reeves said at the event. “When we evaluate a proposal, we will ask one central question: What becomes possible if this idea works? That question will shape what we fund, how we evaluate success, and where we make our next investment.”

In a pre-recorded video, Robert and Barbara Frick said that they conceived the idea for the program and hoped it would put existing research into action.

“We were concerned that students and people just sat on one side of the room and on the other side of the room and they just yelled at each other,” Barbara Frick said. “We thought it was really important that they begin to learn to talk, because they may come up with a third idea that’s even better than one of the first two.”

The pilot program has already funded projects on campus such as the Civil Society Initiative. Professor Allan Hazlett, the director of the Civil Society Initiative, said that his goal was to help change the culture on campus to help students be more willing to express their disagreements and engage civically.

“One of the things I think is tough when you want to do something from a non-STEM field is that the funding landscape is bad,” Hazlett said. “So I think the Frick initiatives are a nice addition to the funding landscape at WashU, because they make funding available in a way that doesn’t really track the applied-STEM-versus-humanities boundary.”

Professor Dan Butler’s educational social media profile, The Poli-Sci Brick Guy, was another one of the projects supported by the pilot program. Butler films videos aimed at teaching high school students about American politics through stop-motion LEGOs. Butler said that he saw the project as a way to expand his teaching beyond those who attend WashU.

“I think that as professors, one of the great things we do is we can step outside of the ivory tower and engage in public scholarship,” Butler said.

Other pilot projects have extended beyond WashU’s campus. The Frick Center for Civic Engagement at Webster Groves High School focuses on fostering civic involvement among its students through classes, guest speakers, and other activities. 

The Frick Initiatives are currently fielding applications for funding, and a seven-person committee made up of academic and community leaders will review them in December.

“[We’re] thinking about these ideas that are born from the expertise in this university … then refined, made better, and then hopefully shoot out across the country, across the world,” Reeves said.