Record gift boosts Shipley building plans

BRYN MAWR The Shipley School has received a $5 million donation, the largest in its 120-year history, from the West family that will be used to begin the second phase of a campus overhaul.

Family patriarch Alfred West Jr. is founder and chairman of SEI, a financial-services company in Oaks. Head of school Steve Piltch said the gift would enable the school to proceed with building a 26,000-square-foot student commons and art center on Montgomery Avenue.

The last of the West children who attended Shipley graduated in 1992, but family members "still support us and, in fact, are committed to doing what will make a difference for kids," Piltch said.

The new building will include a performance venue, classrooms, rehearsal space, and a dining hall and is expected to be completed in 2015. Piltch said the school had raised more than half of the $25 million needed for the project.

- Kathy Boccella