Mary Jane Schafer was an IUP alumna of the Class of 1931, where she earned her Bachelor of Science degree. After graduation, she returned home to Pittsburgh to marry.
Schafer was an avid reader, and took great pride in establishing and maintaining the library in the senior apartment complex in which she lived. She was known to be a generous annual donor in support of the IUP Libraries, and, following her death in 2003, the Mary Jane Schafer Memorial Collection was created through the Foundation for IUP to honor her memory.
The Memorial Collection provides for two distinct programs in the IUP Libraries: the Mary Jane Schafer Memorial Book Collection, which acquires popular and current reading materials to be readily available to be used by the university community; and the Mary Jane Schafer Memorial Speakers Series, which is a discussion series bringing writers and researchers to campus to discuss their personal works or literary topics of interest.
In spring 2017, a leisure reading area was added to the Mary Jane Schafer Foundation area in the IUP Libraries thanks to a generous donation by Jan and Jeff Sterling of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.