USU Announces Carolyn Tanner Irish Pavilion to Overlook Quad

A gift from the Tanner Charitable Trust will honor the legacy of trustee Carolyn Tanner Irish. A longtime supporter of Utah State University, Irish was most known as the retired 10th bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Utah. The memorial gift is in support of the Mehdi Heravi Global Teaching and Learning Center and will create a pavilion overlooking USU’s historic Quad.

The Carolyn Tanner Irish Pavilion will be a flexible event space and multipurpose room that leads out to a rooftop terrace on the southwest corner of the Quad. This large space in the new center will include adaptable furniture configurations to host a variety of activities from major social gatherings or lectures, to faculty meetings and conference sessions or student clubs.

With a groundbreaking scheduled for March 22, 2023, the Mehdi Heravi Global Teaching and Learning Center will significantly enhance the lives of USU students by bringing all language-focused programs in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences under one roof.

In 1996, Irish was elected bishop of the Diocese of Utah, becoming only the fourth woman to be elected a bishop in the Episcopal Church. She served as bishop of Utah until 2010, where she prioritized financial transparency and stewardship of the 22 churches in her diocese as part of the Jubilee Project. She was a vocal advocate for immigrants, LGBTQ+ inclusion, interfaith dialog and reverence for the natural world until her death in June 2021.

After the death of her father, Obert Tanner, in 1993, she succeeded him as chair of the board of the O.C. Tanner company. She took great joy in her role and in her association with its people. She served as a trustee of the Tanner Charitable Trust and Tanner Lectures on Human Values from the time of its foundation in 1978. She remained committed to charitable giving and good corporate citizenship throughout her life and was recognized with many honors and accolades, including an honorary doctorate from USU in 2002.

The Tanner family’s legacy of philanthropy continues to transform Utah State’s physical campus and expands the educational opportunities available for USU’s talented students and faculty. The O.C. Tanner Company and its Tanner Charitable Trust have supported the Obert C. Tanner Lecture Series, the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business and the Inaugural Student Scholarship Endowment.

The foundation also endowed a religious studies collection and funded a room in the Merrill-Cazier Library. The gift to establish the Carolyn Tanner Irish Pavilion will honor Irish’s longstanding support for education, and, in particular, the humanities.

Fittingly, the Mehdi Heravi Global Teaching and Learning Center is a new facility designed to ensure that the students, faculty and staff comprising the new Department of World Languages and Cultures can flourish as one. This department, which is currently spread across several facilities, offers degree programs in several languages and houses the Intensive English Language Institute.

“The incredible generosity of the O.C. Tanner Company is a fantastic endorsement for this project and one that will have a transformative impact on our college and the wider university community,” said CHaSS Dean Joseph Ward.

Student-focused spaces within the new center will cultivate cultural exchange in a lively and welcoming environment and help students gain the communication expertise and cultural knowledge they need to be leaders in their professions and communities. The center will include a cultural hub for each degree language, a lobby and a small café. Additional features include language labs, a technology studio, a reflection room, dedicated language-testing rooms and meeting/study rooms of various sizes that can be used by students as well as faculty.

A cornerstone of Utah State University, the College of Humanities and Social Sciences brings together faculty members engaged in original research and creative activities to teach and mentor students who aspire to be leaders in their professions and communities. Degrees in humanities and social sciences cultivate highly-adaptable professional skills in students through teaching effective communication, research, data analysis, and creative problem-solving.