89-Year Old Retired Florida Professor Left Bulk Of Her $2.8 Million Estate To 31 Former Students

New York Times, A Professor’s Final Gift to Her Students: Her Life Savings:

In August 2021, a mysterious package from Sarasota, Fla., showed up in Nicole Archer’s mailbox in Manhattan.

Dr. Archer hurried upstairs to her cramped Chelsea apartment with the thick envelope in hand and tore it open at her dining table, revealing a legal document she had wondered about for months.

She knew that a beloved college professor had bequeathed her something in her will. She was expecting a modest gift — enough money for a fancy dinner, perhaps, or one of the beaded bracelets the professor liked to make by hand.

But when Dr. Archer, 49, saw the number on the last page — $100,000 — she thought there must be a misplaced decimal point.

“I truly, honestly believed that I read it wrong,” she said. “I remember following the number with my finger, making sure I understood how many zeros it was.”

At about the same time, 30 other people across the country received similar letters, sent at the behest of a professor whose class they had taken years earlier.

Over 50 years of teaching art history at New College of Florida, Prof. Cris Hassold had carved out an influential but complex legacy. She referred to her students as her children. She hired them to clean her home — a disturbing hoarder’s den. At times, she humiliated them in class.

But the students who knew her best described her as a singular force of good in their lives. “The cult of Cris,” as one described it, lives on in her 31 favorite students, who inherited her intensity, her quirks and, in the end, her life savings. ...

In April 2020, Professor Hassold had a stroke at the grocery store and collapsed.

In July of that year, as she was making some progress in her recovery, a fall on the bathroom floor left her needing hospice care. At the peak of the coronavirus pandemic, cordoned off from the world, Professor Hassold died on July 15, 2020. She was 89 [obituary].

Her former students held a virtual memorial service, crying and laughing over Zoom as they shared stories. Many joked that they had secretly hoped she would die in the classroom, her happy place. But they took solace that she died before New College became unrecognizable.

In the years after her death, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida set his sights on transforming the school into a bastion of conservative values. The school shuttered its gender studies program and began recruiting students from Christian schools. Professor Hassold’s students were sure she would be appalled by how it changed.

In August 2021, Professor Hassold’s former students received a package of legal documents that revealed her biggest secret. She had amassed a $2.8 million estate and was dividing it among the 36 people closest to her — 31 of whom were former students, according to documents shared by Steve Prenner, the executor of her estate and a former student.

Some of the students were shocked, particularly those who could not recall when they had last spoken to her.

Professor Hassold had allotted the money based on how close she had been to each student, and how much she believed they needed the money, according to the former students. The payments ranged from around $26,000 to $560,000.

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