NEWPORT, R.I. -- Salve Regina University announced Friday that it has received a $1-million gift from the Alletta Morris McBean Charitable Trust which will endow its first named academic program in memory of Newport preservationist and socialite Noreen Stonor Drexel.
The gift and the naming of the Noreen Stonor Drexel Cultural and Historic Preservation Program is scheduled to be formally announced during a private reception at the university on Tuesday.
Drexel was a founding trustee of the Alleta Morris McBean Charitable Trust. A longtime Salve Regina trustee, she was awarded an honorary doctorate in humane letters from Salve Regina in 1999.
Drexel was a decendent of the state's founder, Roger Williams, and of Nicholas Brown, after whom the college was named. In 1941, she married John R. Drexell III of Philadelphia, whose family founded Drexel University.
She died in November 2012.
An earlier version of this story was published at 11:49 a.m. and updated at 4:05 p.m.