SMU Receives Largest Donation In School History ($45M)

[StallionsModelT]

DMN article linked below.

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/local-ne ... istory.ece

[b_caesar]

Daily Campus story:

http://www.smudailycampus.com/news/smu- ... foundation

SMU receives $45 million from Meadows Foundation
By Christina Cox

The Meadows Foundation, Inc. pledged $45 million to SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts and the Meadows Museum this month. This marks the single-largest gift in the University’s history.

“This year, as we celebrate both the 50th anniversary of the Meadows Museum and the centennial of SMU’s opening, we are honored to accept a gift that will continue this extraordinary partnership,” President R. Gerald Turner said in a press release.

According to Turner, SMU has had a long partnership with The Meadows Foundation that was initiated through Algur H. Meadows’ endowment of the Meadows School of the Arts and the creation of the Meadows Museum.

“The resulting collaboration has enhanced the lives of thousands of students, faculty and members of the local, regional and international communities,” Turner said in a press release.

The $45 million gift designates $25 million to support goals and programs at the Meadows Museum and $20 million to support the Meadow’s School of the Arts in its goal to lead the nation in arts education.

The $25 million gift to the Meadows Museum includes $13 million for exhibitions, education programs and initiatives, $6 million for acquisitions and $6 million for an acquisition challenge grant. The gift will also help the Museum expand relationships with international cultural institutions.

“As we celebrate the important role the Meadows Museum plays as an educational and cultural leader, we also honor the pivotal role the Meadows family and Foundation have played in the creation and incredible growth of the Museum,” said Mark A. Roglan, the Linda P. and William A. Custard Director of the Meadows Museum and Centennial Chair in Meadows School of the Arts in a press release.

The $20 million gift to the Meadows School of the Arts includes $12 million for facility enhancements, a $10 million challenge grant and $8 million for student and faculty recruitment, retention and strategic initiatives.

“This generous gift will help the Meadows School to maintain and continue its historic journey as a national model for arts education,” said Sam Holland, the Algur H. Meadows dean of the Meadows School of the Arts, in a press release.

Algur H. Meadaows and his wife, Virginia, created The Meadows Foundation in 1948 to benefit the people of Texas. The Foundation has donated more than $700 million in grants and direct charitable expenditure to more than 7,000 Texas institutions and agencies. With this commitment, The Meadows Foundation has provided more than $100 million to the University since 1995.

“This historic gift recognizes their remarkable transformations over the past two decades, as well as the talented leadership in place at SMU,” said Linda P. Evans, chairman and CEO of The Meadows Foundation in a press release.

The $42 million gift counts toward the $1 billion goal of SMU Unbridled: The Second Century Campaign. The campaign has raised more than $942 million in gifts and pledges to date.

“This year, as we celebrate both the 50th anniversary of the Meadows Museum and the centennial of SMU’s opening, we are honored to accept a gift that will continue this extraordinary partnership,” Turner said in a press release.

SMU will formally announce this gift to the SMU and Dallas community Monday at 11 a.m. in the rotunda of Dallas Hall.

[DanFreibergerForHeisman]

Wow. That's awesome!

[gostangs]

That's great news. Hoping we can end the campaign with a similar transformational gift at Cox, Engineering, Research and sciences.

Hoping we can continue efforts to break out of the "liberal Arts college" trap and become an even more important research, science and business University.

[couch 'em]

Why would we want to emphasize engineering and business when we can push world changing programs like Gender Studies? World Changers Shaped Here

[GrapevineMustang]

Interesting perspective. SMU doesn't feel even a little like a liberal arts college. Everything I hear and read starts with Cox's reputation as an elite business school, which seems to carry over the rep of the whole university, according to most people I know.

This donation is great news!

[blackoutpony]

Why would we want to emphasize engineering and business when we can push world changing programs like Gender Studies? World Changers Shaped Here

Don't forget our cool new commercial that talks about malware and that we're all human beings!

[DanFreibergerForHeisman]

A $45M donation to the athletic department would be nice too.

[Bergermeister]

A $45M donation to the athletic department would be nice too.

Somebody make a few calls.

[Planter's Punch]

I think people are confusing the fine arts with the liberal arts. Dedman is liberal arts and Meadows is fine arts. Also not sure how this makes SMU a liberal arts school. Carnegie-Mellon has strong fine arts department, but no one would think of them as a liberal arts school.

The one thing that has really been missing from this campaign is a transformational gift to hard sciences. All the liberal arts money seems to go to the soft sciences.

[SMUstang07]

So is this gift in the form of cash of art? My favorite quote is the below:

"The gift helps SMU “compete with the very best arts and communications programs in the country,” Holland said. “We used to think of our competition as TCU and Baylor and UT, but now we think of Northwestern, and USC, and Oberlin and Boston University, much more of a national field, as being our competition.”

[CalallenStang]

I think people are confusing the fine arts with the liberal arts. Dedman is liberal arts and Meadows is fine arts. Also not sure how this makes SMU a liberal arts school. Carnegie-Mellon has strong fine arts department, but no one would think of them as a liberal arts school.

The one thing that has really been missing from this campaign is a transformational gift to hard sciences. All the liberal arts money seems to go to the soft sciences.

Agree. There has been money going to Engineering, but (seemingly) not to Physics, Geology, etc.

[friarwolf]

That puts us very close to $990M for the campaign. $1B is a formality now...............

[StallionsModelT]

$1B was a formality the day it was announced we were upping it from the original goal. No way would SMU make it public that the new goal was $1B if we weren't absolutely positive we would get there.

[friarwolf]

Ehh, behind the scenes, there was nervousness.....This campaign was starting to drag and without this huge gift, it would have been very close............