WENHAM - Gordon College was recently named one of the best colleges in the country. Today, it is also a lot richer.

The school yesterday announced it has received a $60 million endowment gift, by far the largest in its history. The gift comes from the grandparents of two students enrolled in the school.

California real estate developer Dale E. Fowler and his wife, Sarah Ann Fowler, will have the campus officially renamed in their honor on Wednesday. Their largesse nearly triples the school's $33 million endowment fund. The money will flow to the fund following the couple's deaths.

This is a gift that will keep on giving, as the school can only spend the interest it earns, but how it spends the money is up to the school.

Dale Fowler said by telephone from the couple's summer home in the Berkshires yesterday that a lot of thought was given to the decision to bequest such a large gift to a single institution. He and his wife looked at other schools with much larger endowments and wondered what the point was, he said.

"It occurred to us it might be better if they started spending some of it on making lives better for their students and professors," Fowler said.

That's exactly the plan. Most colleges spend no more than 5 percent of the proceeds of their endowments each year, and President R. Judson Carlberg said Gordon will use the same rule of thumb. The money will be spent on increasing scholarship funds for students and hiking professors' salaries.

"It's so expensive to live on the North Shore," Carlberg said, which makes it hard for the school to recruit teachers.

The Fowlers have previously made other significant donations to the school, paying for new bleachers at the Brigham Athletic Complex, refurbishing the Frost Hall lobby, and pledging to fund the salary, benefits, expenses and office space for an admissions recruiter in southern California.

Additional money has also been promised to build an administrative building to be called the Fowler Center and a future residence hall.

The school's sprawling grounds along Grapevine Road in Wenham will officially become the Dale E. and Sarah Ann Fowler Campus at Gordon College next week. There are two smaller campuses in Lynn and Boston, as well.

The Fowlers have a granddaughter and grandson attending the school, and Dale Fowler said they appreciate the fact that Gordon "inculcates Christian values," into an excellent educational experience.

"We're very pleased with what they're doing there," he said.

Fowler said he was delighted the couple's gift will directly benefit students and faculty.

"We believe those two factors go a long way to making the best institution you can have."

Carlberg said the school has always had to operate on what it collects in tuitions because its endowment fund was relatively small.

"This is the kind of thing that could transform the institution down the road," he said.

Comparing funds

In comparison to larger universities, Gordon College's $93 million endowment fund is small potatoes. According to statistics available from the federal Department of Education in 2006, Harvard University had a fund that exceeded $25 billion, while Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley was at the bottom of the list of the richest 120 schools with a $449 million endowment fund.

However, if endowment funds are ranked by their value per student, Gordon fares much better. When its fund reaches $93 million, it will work out to $62,000 per student. That's nearly double Boston University at $34,491 and on par with the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill at $60,612 and the College of William and Mary at $63,773.

Sources: Department of Education and Wikipedia

Gordon by the numbers

About 1,500 students attend Gordon, which was founded in 1889 as a missionary training institution in Boston. The Wenham campus opened in 1955. Tuition at the school is about $24,000 annually, with an additional $6,600 for room and board.