The Zucker Family School of Education is named in honor of Charleston philanthropist Anita Zucker and her family. In 2014, Mrs. Zucker signed a $4 million gift agreement with The Citadel designed to elevate the Zucker Family School of Education to national prominence through development of scholarly and practical tools for improving education and noteworthy direct assistance to area classroom teachers and school leaders. The gift will also position the School’s education program to be a point of contact in the community for fostering entrepreneurialism in education. In naming the Zucker Family School of Education, The Citadel marked its first school named after a substantial donor.
An educator by background, Mrs. Zucker is now CEO of The InterTech Group Inc., a North Charleston-based global manufacturing conglomerate. She is heavily involved in the Tri-County Cradle-to-Career Collaborative, which aligns nonprofits, school districts, business leaders and others to promote education, employment, and community development. In addition, she serves on the board of the Coastal Community Foundation and is vice chairwoman of Charleston Promise Neighborhood.
For Zucker, a gift to the School of Education marked a chance to support both education in general, her favorite cause, as well as The Citadel, an institution near to her heart. In the late 1970s she took education courses at The Citadel to keep her teaching certification current, and her son, Jonathan Zucker, earned his master’s of business administration at The Citadel as well.
Mrs. Zucker and her late husband, Jerry, have long embraced the concept of tikkun olam, Hebrew for “repair of the world” and a key tenet of Judaism. Speaking to this passion, Mrs. Zucker has said “Someone helped our parents to be able to repair their world. Now we want to teach others how to change the world.”