University of Delaware lands record $71.5 million donation to business school

Yahoo

18-03-2025

University of Delaware just landed the largest philanthropic donation in its 282-year history.
And the $71.5 million gift stands to transform its business school.
Robert Siegfried Jr. and Kathleen Marie Horgan Siegfried, along with The Siegfried Group, made this gift to Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics official this week. And the couple, both alumni and supporters of the university for decades, will celebrate the gift again later this spring.
President Dennis Assanis called the donation a "transformative moment" for UD. It will help create Lerner College's new "Siegfried Hall," according to an announcement from the university, to be fit with modern classrooms, research labs, a student-run café and an auditorium. The "hub of activity" will be designed to energize the academic journey for Lerner students.
UD highlighted some key facets:
A Student Success and Excellence Center will facilitate personal and professional development with student advising and career services.
An immersive, experiential learning space will host instructional computing labs, public computing space, generative AI and more.
Interactive student meeting spaces will aim to integrate technology to facilitate team projects, interdisciplinary research, case study competitions, club activities, entrepreneurial programming and remote-job interviewing.
The new building will also be designed to foster a sense of community, according to UD, connecting Lerner students, faculty, staff and alumni in the "united pursuit of academic and professional aspirations."
The hall will also host the new Siegfried Institute for Leadership and Free Enterprise. That "idea lab" will develop effective leadership, study the critical role "basic principles of limited government," the rule of law and free enterprise play in supporting individual freedom, UD said.
The idea is, this combination of Siegfried Hall and the institute will create a powerful environment to think, learn and develop. And, such engagement will create a national profile for the institute.
The university said it will commission the design process for Siegfried Hall this spring, with a goal of breaking ground within the next four years. The exact campus location will be announced later.
Before this, the Siegfrieds had already committed more than $6 million to Lerner College, Horn Entrepreneurship and the Center for Economic Education and Entrepreneurship. That philanthropy already created the Siegfried Youth Leadership Initiative, a leadership development program designed for Delaware students in grades 8 through 12, as well as the Siegfried Fellows program, a highly selective 10-month immersive program for undergraduate student leaders.
Now, Leaner College has even more fuel to serve nearly 3,300 undergraduate and 1,000 graduate students.
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This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: UD lands record $71.5 million gift to business school