Roy Huffington's Endowments an Investment in SMU's Future

[MrMustang1965]

from Robert Miller's Business Column, The Dallas Morning News:

It seems fitting that Southern Methodist University alumnus Roy M. Huffington, a man of many career and public service paths, would choose another man of many pursuits as a role model.

Harking back more than 200 years, the Houston petroleum investor mimicked the Benjamin Franklin Trust to set up two $5 million endowments at SMU, one for faculty compensation and the other for student scholarships.

They will be known as the Huffington Bicentennial Faculty Endowment Fund and the Huffington Bicentennial Scholarship Endowment Fund.

The bicentennial in the endowment names is intentional. The funds should grow for 200 years, just as the Benjamin Franklin Trust was set up to benefit the cities of Boston and Philadelphia.

The fund operates this way:

A small percentage of the earned interest is dispersed annually to the designated causes, and the rest is plowed back into the endowment.

As the endowment grows, the percentage of the payout stays the same but the dollar amount distributed continues to rise.

Mr. Huffington has already shown how this works. He gave $5 million to SMU to establish the unrestricted Huffington Bicentennial Endowment Fund in 1990. It, too, was patterned after the Benjamin Franklin Trust and has tripled to $15.1 million.

"One of the most important components of a university's growth in academic strength is to have a strong endowment that supports faculty and students," Mr. Huffington said. "This endowment is intended to ensure long-term resources at SMU for the recruitment and retention of outstanding faculty and the bright students they will inspire."

SMU President R. Gerald Turner said the school is grateful for Mr. Huffington's "commitment to the continued advancement of his alma mater, as reflected in this generous new long-term investment in the strength of SMU's faculty and students. For SMU to fulfill its goal of becoming one of the nation's premier private universities, we must be able to continue attracting distinguished faculty and outstanding students.

"Resources for competitive salaries and merit scholarships are major factors in achieving our academic goals."


Longtime ties

Mr. Huffington and his late wife, Phyllis Gough Huffington, have now given a total $20.6 million to SMU. They have endowed faculty chairs in finance and geological sciences and established several endowed scholarship funds.

Mrs. Huffington graduated from Highland Park High School and earned her bachelor's degree in business from SMU in 1943. She was an active volunteer and philanthropist who died in 2003.

Mr. Huffington, a native of Tomball, near Houston, later lived in Dallas, graduated from North Dallas High School and earned a bachelor's degree in geology from SMU in 1938 and a master's and doctorate in geology from Harvard University.

He is chairman and chief executive of Roy M. Huffington Inc., an international petroleum operations investment firm. His career has included global oil and gas exploration, international business and military and diplomatic service.

He served in the U.S. Navy from 1942 to 1945, receiving the Bronze Star, with Combat V, and the Presidential Unit Citation.


Bridges to the East

After World War II, he served for 10 years as a senior geologist and exploration division geologist with Houston-based Humble Oil and Refining Co., an almost wholly-owned subsidiary of Standard Oil of New Jersey, now Exxon Mobil Corp.

In 1956, he founded Huffco, an oil and gas firm that started exploring in Indonesia in the late 1960s.

After signing a production-sharing contract with Indonesia in 1968, a major gas strike there in 1972 launched the company on a 25-year joint venture with the Indonesian government.

In 1988, Newsweek magazine listed Mr. Huffington as one of 25 Americans "in the forefront of building bridges to the East."

Among his international activities, Mr. Huffington was U.S. ambassador to Austria from 1990 to 1993, where he worked to encourage business opportunities between the newly accessible Eastern bloc countries and the West.


Many honors

After returning to the United States, he renewed his involvement in oil and gas investments.

A member of the SMU board of trustees from 1980-87, Mr. Huffington was named a trustee emeritus in 1991. In 1996, he and his wife received the Mustang Award, which recognizes longtime service and philanthropy to the university.

His other honors include the Woodrow Wilson Award for Corporate Citizenship from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Henry Laurence Gantt Medal from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

He is a trustee of the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library in College Station and vice chairman of the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University.

He is also an honorary life trustee of the national board of the Asia Society and has received distinguished alumni awards from SMU and Harvard Business School. He received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from SMU in 1990 when he delivered the commencement address.