Barbara and Ed Haldeman have endowed Dartmouth College's athletic director position with a $5 million gift. (Courtesy photograph)
Barbara and Ed Haldeman have endowed Dartmouth College's athletic director position with a $5 million gift. (Courtesy photograph) Credit: Courtesy photograph

Hanover — Dartmouth College has received a $5 million gift from the family of a former chairman of its Board of Trustees to endow the job of athletic director, the college announced on Monday.

The gift from the family foundation of Ed and Barbara Haldeman will help expand the Dartmouth’s athletic director’s “ability to invest in programs and innovations that boost Dartmouth’s competitive advantage and enhance the student-athlete experience,” the college said in a news release.

The endowment means current athletic director Harry Sheehy, whom the Haldemans have known for almost 20 years, will become the Haldeman Family Director of Athletics and Recreation at Dartmouth.

“A distinguishing characteristic of Dartmouth is how important athletics are to a large number of our students,” Ed Haldeman, a 1970 Dartmouth graduate and former mutual fund executive, said in the release. “Because athletics have been so important to our family and because we think Harry is the model of what we want in an athletic director, we’re delighted to endow the position.”

Ed Haldeman was president and CEO, and then chairman, of Boston-based Putnam Investment Management. He then served as CEO of the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp., or Freddie Mac, from 2009 to 2012. Haldeman was a Dartmouth College trustee for eight years and served as chairman of the board from 2007 through 2010. He currently is listed as a special adviser with Reverence Capital Partners.

The Haldemans first met Sheehy in the late 1990s when he was athletic director at Williams College, where their son Matt played squash and tennis, Dartmouth said in the release. The Haldemans’ two daughters, Charlotte Haldeman Whitmore and Catherine Haldeman Hale, played varsity squash at Dartmouth.

Sheehy called the donation “a landmark gift that will allow all Dartmouth athletic directors going forward to make strategic investments that produce the finest Big Green programs possible.”

The Haldemans in 2004 provided $10 million for the Haldeman Center at Dartmouth, named for Ed Haldeman’s parents. It houses several academic programs, including the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding.

Dartmouth said it has now received more than $24 million in gifts over the past three years to endow 12 coaching positions.