The Curry School of Education last night announced the second half of its largest donation in history, a $23 million gift from non-alumni Daniel Meyers, 41, who serves as vice-chair of the school's fundraising foundation.
The donation will fund a planned addition to the Curry School near its current home in Ruffner Hall, to be named after the late Anthony D. "Wally" Bavaro, a former football player who went on to teach history in Boston public schools for 40 years after suffering a career-ending knee injury in the NFL.
"It's quite a remarkable story," Curry School Dean David W. Breneman said.
The gift from Meyers, who attended Bates College and graduated from Brandeis University, represents the third-largest non-alumni donation to the University and places it near the top dozen overall. Meyers has also endowed the Curry School's Newton and Rita Meyers Professorship in honor of his parents, according to a University press release.
"Higher education raises the common denominator for the development of intellect, societal behavior and economic prosperity," Meyers said in the press release.
Following Meyers' initial donation last October of $250,000 in stock which has since grown to $11.5 million in value, the matching addition makes it the second-largest single gift to a public education school in the country.
"Dan Meyers' gift is a tremendous endorsement of the Curry School and enhances its reputation as one of the top education schools in the country," U.Va. President John T. Casteen, III said in the press release.
The donation in support of the Curry school's planned $32 million expansion is the latest dividend to the University stemming from a relationship that began more than a decade ago between Breneman, then a visiting economics professor at Harvard, and Meyers, a capital markets trader in Boston.
At the time, Meyers solicited advice from Breneman that would lead to Meyers' co-founding of First Marblehead Corp., a loan service provider for private education lenders. Meyers now serves as the board chair and chief executive office of the company, earning a salary of $1.5 million as of last year. Breneman also has remained on the company's advisory board as an expert in the economics of higher education.
With more than two-thirds of the funding for the planned expansion now in place, Breneman said the University's next step is to seek approval from the state to hire an architect and begin construction of its new 80,000 sq. ft. building, which would almost double the Curry School's current size.
"This is a really big boost for the project," he said of the donation.
With the school's faculty currently scattered in crowded buildings around Grounds, Breneman said he hopes to break ground on the facility by the spring of 2006.
The Curry School also received a $3 million investment from Microsoft announced yesterday. The gift will go toward a collaborative initiative between the Curry School and the Darden Business School to train principals in business practices in hopes of raising student achievement.
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