Aaron Copland School of Music (ACSM) at Queens College was rewarded last fall with a surprise donation of over $1.6 million from the recently deceased Beatrice Schacher-Meyer, who did not attend the college.

Edward Smaldone, director of ACSM, was first notified about this in 2007 by the attorney who handled Schacher-Meyer's estate. After three and a half years were spent on a required search for potential heirs, the check was received in June.

This was the biggest endowment that the music department has ever received. The school had no knowledge of the donation in advance, according to a report in The Queens Gazette.

"Quite possibly over the years she attended some performances here," said Smaldone, according to an article from The Queens Gazette. "After all, we learned that she was a professional, card-carrying union musician herself."

Schacher-Meyer was a Forest Hills resident and quite fond of music.

According to the Queens Tribune, she requested that the money be used for student scholarships. Smaldone decided to use the donation for a number of small scholarships that ranged from $500 to a few thousand dollars.

"I want to really spread the money around as much as possible," said Smaldone in an article from the Queens Tribune.

"The quality of the performers, on all instruments and all programs, has been increasing over the past number of years," he reiterated.

Though Queen College's tuition is not as expensive when compared to other private universities, these scholarships are still essential for many undergraduate and graduate students who demonstrate both talent and financial need, according to Hubert Howe, music professor and composer.

"One of the important things about CUNY is that our tuition is already among the lowest of any school in the country," said Howe.

"It's not as if we need to compete on price particularly, we've already got that represented very well. You really need to have the ability to give scholarships to people who are good, that you want to recruit."

In addition to attracting more students, these scholarships are also benefit the staff, according to Assistant Professor Janice Smith.

"We didn't receive it until this fall, but it has already made an impact on my working life." said Smith. "For the first time ever I have a research assistant, and that's true for all of the music education faculty. We were able to gift a scholarship to somebody in order for them to assist with our work."

Smith also pointed out that gifting this donation to students is the only option, rather than using it to make other improvements in the department.

"I worry that people in the administration will see that money and think that we don't need any money for our department," said Smith.

"But they don't realize that we can only use it for scholarships, we can't use it to repair equipment, we can't use it for library books, we can't use it to pay staff salaries or anything of that sort. Or even for advertising. We have to use it to pay scholarships for students, so I think it will have a serious positive effect for us just because we will have money. We've never had money, especially for undergrads."

Thus far, the gift has already had a huge impact on students and faculty.

With these funds, not only will a number of students have to pay a smaller tuition, but the music school will also have the option of providing scholarships for prospective music students.

"Having this just means that we will be able to attract a large number of very good students," said Howe.

"We hope that that will have a long term effect on the whole quality of education and everything that we do here."