Commitment to Education Inspires Gift to Law School

Steve ’79 JD and Jane Bahls Support Current and Future Law Students With a Blended Gift, Including a Bequest in Their Estate

Steve Bahls ’79 JD—a former professor at the University of Montana School of Law and dean of Capital University—knows firsthand the impact donors make on academic institutions. Now president of Augustana College, he has seen how gifts—including those made through estate plans—have not only supported University improvements, but changed students’ lives.

“During the course of my career as a law school dean and college president, I’ve seen hundreds of students benefit from the scholarships made possible by donors, and I’ve seen these students break the cycle of poverty as a result,” Bahls says. “Education really is the key to the ladder of opportunity.”

This was true in Bahls’s own life as well. “My grandfather lost the family farm in the Great Depression, and my father and his siblings had to go live with other relatives because their economic circumstances were so dire,” Bahls says. “My father volunteered for World War II, and the GI Bill afforded him a free education.” Opportunities like the one Bahls’s father was granted are not as widely available today, Bahls says. Because of this, he and his wife, Jane, have decided to focus the bulk of their giving on education so that other deserving students can receive similar aid.

As an educator, Bahls says he enjoys meeting some of the students who are directly affected by his giving, but he also understands the significance of planned gifts, which is why he and Jane have committed to a blended gift—one that includes both outright and deferred components. In 2016, the couple established the Steve and Jane Bahls Endowed Scholarship to benefit students at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, and in 2018, they documented a bequest that will enhance the scholarship and increase its impact at the end of their lifetimes. Bequests—most often made through a will or trust—allow donors to make a significant impact at the University, while retaining control of certain assets while they are alive.

“We decided to leave an estate gift but also create the scholarship now, instead of waiting until we were gone, because we wanted to see our gift in action during our lifetime,” Bahls says. The couple also recently documented a pledge over five years to the Law School Annual Fund in honor of Bahls’s 40th Reunion. “I know from being a dean and president that unrestricted dollars are what create the margin of excellence,” Bahls says.

“We are always grateful to be the recipient of our alumni’s generosity, but it is especially gratifying when a fellow academic and educator recognizes the value in the work we are doing to advance legal education,” says Northwestern Law Dean Kimberly Yuracko. “Steve and Jane Bahls’s blended gift ensures that the law school community will benefit from their generosity for decades to come.”

You, too, can pave the way for current and future students at Northwestern. Contact Northwestern Gift Planning at 800-826-6709 or giftplanning@northwestern.edu to learn more.