Rutgers gets $13 donation from an alumnus

[JCB]

An anonymous Rutgers University graduate has donated $13 million to help the university transform one of its campuses into a hub for business and professional studies.

The donation, which will be announced Friday by Rutgers President Richard McCormick during his sixth annual address to the school community, is the largest private gift in Rutgers' history.

Much of the gift, $10 million, will be used to help construct a new building to house the business school at Livingston Campus, located in Piscataway, with the balance going to support a new faculty member.

McCormick said the donor's goal is to help students prepare for the realities of today's business world, which often demands scientific knowledge as well as business know-how.

"We are enormously grateful," McCormick said today. "We have a vision for the development of the Livingston campus as a base for professional schools and continuing education at Rutgers, and the stake in the ground for that vision is a new building for this Rutgers business school."

The new building -- still in the conceptual stages -- will be part of an ongoing overhaul of the Livingston campus that will bring in the school of management and labor relations, the school of social work, and the graduate school of education. There also are plans for a hotel and conference center in the coming years.

The project comes at a time of growing demand for business degrees at Rutgers. The business school received 11,000 applications for 300 freshmen seats for its new four-year undergraduate business program for Rutgers-New Brunswick students. The new program would expand an existing two-year business program in New Brunswick.

"Thirty years ago if you described a research university like Rutgers," McCormick said, "you would not describe business as a core area. That's changed. The field of business, undergraduate, graduate and Ph.D. level, are now essential to universities like Rutgers."

Philip Furmanski, executive vice president for academic affairs, said business remains an attractive career path for students in spite of the turmoil in the financial markets.

"There are still great opportunities in accounting, marketing and supply chain management, and it remains a global economy that students want to contribute and advance," he said. "Most of those career paths are quite lucrative, and our students tend to be highly sought after."

The new emphasis on professional schools will also allow Rutgers to offer more executive programs for corporations and an opportunity to contribute to economic growth in the area, Furmanski said.

NJ.com

That's fantastic news for a University that has a relatively low endowment compared to other schools of our type/size (big public school). The Rutgers Business School is already very good, and the move towards making it the best it can be is a smart one. Read one of the comments:

"This is a good sign. A top notch business school on the main NB/Piscataway campus is one of the few opportunities Rutgers can really leverage to hopefully improve the university years and years in the future. A quality business school with top professors and infrastructure is can really help achieve the goal of making the university as a whole better. Graduates from a top school can make connections into industry, be placed into high paying jobs, and hopefully rise up the ranks to a time where they become part of the wealthy class. Hopefully some of that would flow back to the university in donations. Other fields can possibly provide alumni who become wealthy and will donate, but business is the arena where the possibility of cranking out really wealthy alumni (and many of them) exists. Mind you we can't just be an also ran biz school, have to strive to be and become top of the line and that will lead to great things for the future of the university as a whole."

Again, fantastic news.