NCSU Receives $50M Gift

I realize today is a college football Saturday, but I didn’t want this to go unnoticed.

I can’t overstate how important this is.  Not to mention how freaking amazing….

NC State receives $50 million gift – the largest in school history (NewsObserver.com)

RALEIGH — N.C. State University has received the largest single gift in its history – $50 million – to provide scholarships, the school’s administration and the Park Foundation announced Friday.

The donation puts the university closer to funding its most prestigious scholarships “in perpetuity,” said Chancellor Randy Woodson.

“The earnings from the endowment will ensure, as long as there’s an N.C. State University, that there will be a Park Scholars program that funds scholarships to the best and brightest students,” he said.

Until now, the Park Foundation – created by the late Roy Park, class of 1931 – has sustained the scholarship program with yearly grants. Friday’s announcement puts the scholarship in the university’s hands. NCSU plans to raise an additional $100 million and then fund the scholarships indefinitely with investment profits from the new pool of money.

[snip]

The gift is the high-water mark of Woodson’s three-year push to supplement public money and tuition with private backing. In his three years on the job, the university has grown its endowment almost 70 percent, to $769 million.

The chancellor shed “a few tears of joy” in his office when he heard this spring that the deal had been finalized, he said.

The $50 million sum matches the largest single gift ever received by rival UNC-Chapel Hill, and it should qualify for a spot on The Chronicle of Higher Education’s list of the largest private gifts to higher education, which ranges from $50 million to $600 million for single schools in the United States.

–

Chancellor Randy Woodson continues to address the needs of NC State University.  He’s made no secret of the fact that NCSU’s endowment needed bolstering in a huge way.

I can’t overstate how much I love THAT guy either.

–

Please, if you didn’t already do so, click the link and read the entire article.  I know some of you don’t wish to give the N&O the page hits…but Chancellor Woodson has more than earned the read on this one.

–