Moody Foundation donates $50M to Univ. of Texas Communication Department
Communication Dean Roderick Hart at the University of Texas was plenty grateful for the $2.2 million donation from the Galveston-based Moody Foundation. Little did he know that an informal thank-you dinner with a couple of foundation officials would lead them to boost it to $50 million.
The pledge, being announced today, will create the largest endowment for the study of communication at any public university in the nation, according to UT officials. It is also among the largest gifts in the university’s history. And henceforth, the College of Communication will be known as the Moody College of Communication.
The manner in which the donation came about was “just magical, almost heavenly,” Hart said.
The Moody Foundation had donated the $2.2 million for a three-dimensional production curriculum at the college’s radio-television-film department. So Hart and Mike Wilson, the college’s director of development, took Ross Moody, a trustee of the foundation, and Allan Matthews, its grants director, to dinner in February at Eddie V’s Prime Seafood in downtown Austin. The conversation soon turned to the college’s goals and ambitions.
“I said the big enchilada was to name the college,” Hart recalled. “Ross said, ‘How much would that be?’
“I don’t think I ever used the phrase ‘$50 million’ before,” Hart said. “There was a pause. His response was, ‘How long would we have to pay it off?’
“Suddenly, I sat upright in my chair. It was something totally unexpected.”
The exchange prompted Hart to seek permission from UT President Bill Powers and the Board of Regents to pursue formal discussions. Hart said the college’s posture — very much outward-facing, with a traveling debate team, a civic life institute and myriad journalism programs — seemed to appeal to Moody Foundation officials.
The private, charitable organization, with assets of about $1 billion, is perhaps best known for funding civic projects in Galveston, but it has long awarded grants throughout the state.
“By making this gift, the Moody Foundation seeks to increase the presence of the university on a national and international basis and improve the quality of its education by recruiting the best professors, the best administration and in turn having the best students coming out of the Moody College of Communication,” Ross Moody, a UT alumnus, said in a statement.
The $50 million, expected to be paid out over 10 years, if not sooner, will underwrite research, faculty compensation, graduate student fellowships, a new honors program for first- and second-year students, and programs involving sports media, international journalism and speech-hearing disorders, among others.
A $5 million slice of the gift, coupled with an equal amount from the university, will be used to refurbish portions of the four-decade-old Jesse H. Jones Communication Complex and to build a pedestrian bridge between it and the Belo Center for New Media just across Dean Keeton Street.
The largest gift to UT — indeed, the largest gift to any college or university in Texas — was a bequest in 2003 from Dallas oilman John A. Jackson for geosciences; UT officials originally valued it at $232 million but later revised it to $245 million.
Last month, UT officials announced the donation of the Magnum Photos collection of 200,000 images, with a value estimated at $200 million, from Michael and Susan Dell, Glenn and Amanda Fuhrman, and John and Amy Phelan.
Other large donations to UT over the years include $55 million from Sarah and Ernest Butler to the music school, $50 million from Red McCombs for the business school and two $50 million donations from the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, one for pediatric research, computer science and healthy living and another for a medical school that the university hopes to open in 2016.
UT has raised about $2.5 billion toward the $3 billion it hopes to amass in donations and pledges by the end of August 2014 as part of a fund drive that began Sept. 1, 2006.
Source: http://www.mystatesman.com/news/news/local/50-million-donation-to-ut-a-case-of-serendipity/nbS32/?icmp=statesman_internallink_invitationbox_apr2013_statesmanstubtomystatesmanpremium
