The Huge Philanthropic Gift at the Heart of a Major University Initiative to Advance Computing

With a certain amount of fanfare, the University of Southern California last week announced a school-wide, $1-billion-plus initiative to expand and transform the teaching and study of advanced computing throughout the institution’s programs and curricula. The brainchild of USC President Carol Folt, the initiative reflects the increasing integration of computers in academia and society and the need to educate students in the ethical and responsible use of digital technology, according to the university.

A 2020 philanthropic gift of $260 million — the largest in USC’s history and a big one for academic mega-gifting overall — provided seed funding for the university’s computing initiative. A huge donation toward a splashy new computer science program is par for the course when it comes to university philanthropy, which has often sought to keep schools at the cutting edge of trends like biotech or big data. But this gift is a little different than most, in part because of its unique source — a huge flow of philanthropic dollars following a company sale a few years back.

The scope of the program alone sets it apart. According to the school, the initiative will consolidate technology studies across the campus and includes a new School of Advanced Computing that will serve as a home for advanced computation projects for students and faculty. It also aims to spur research and innovation in advanced computing technologies, including artificial intelligence and machine learning, data science, blockchain and quantum information. USC says the initiative will focus first on three areas of technology that are currently advancing at a fast rate: AI and machine learning software, hardware efficiency and scalability, and big data and quantum computing.

It may come as a surprise to some that USC has one of the largest computer science faculties in the country and is one of the leading conferrers of undergraduate and graduate degrees in computer technology. But every discipline today requires a level of digital fluency, says USC, so students in all the university’s schools will be exposed to training in data analytics, coding and ethics, and related tech topics.

When complete, the new advanced computing school, complete with new buildings and a new “Silicon Beach” campus in the Los Angeles tech corridor, and the increased support for technology across campus departments and programs will presumably boost that standing further. The effort will also connect with the tech industry presence in L.A. and provide coding and other educational opportunities for young people in the community.

“Our idea is that we’re helping to insert the backbone for technology and ethical thinking about technology — not just in the computational sciences, but in the computational advances taking place in all fields,” Folt told me.

So where did the money come from? The $260 million gift to USC from the Lord Foundation of California was actually one of a chorus of Lord-related mega-donations around the country, all stemming from the same corporate source.

The origins of the funding trace back a century to industrialist Hugh Lord, who, in 1924, founded the Lord Corporation, which was successful in manufacturing and technology. Lord’s son Thomas took over in the early 1950s. In 2019, the Lord Corporation was sold to Parker Hannifin Corporation for more than $3.6 billion, and through a trust that Thomas had set up, approximately $1 billion of the sale proceeds were transferred to four foundations: the Lord Foundation of California, which donated the money to USC; the Lord Foundation of Massachusetts, which benefitted MIT; the Lord Foundation of North Carolina, which funded Duke University; and the Lord Foundation of Ohio, which supported the Cleveland Clinic.

The Lord foundations had been supporting their affiliated institutions with tens of millions since the 1980s. But after the 2019 sale of the Lord Corporation that enabled the transfer of over $1 billion into the Lord foundations, each of the four foundations committed its share, about $260 million, to its affiliated grantee institutions. Use of the funding from the influx was left up to the leaders of the grantee institutions. Thomas Lord was a proponent of the value of private institutions to address social problems and needs, so it is no coincidence that the four Lord foundations supported those well-established and venerable private educational and research institutions.

Following its big grant to USC, the Lord Foundation of California made the decision to sunset. Those who have followed the long-running debate within philanthropy between perpetuity and spend-down should take a look at arguments for and against each method of grantmaking in this piece and a companion article by IP’s Philip Rojc.

Folt was appointed USC president in July of 2019; that would make determining how to deploy the Lord Foundation gift one of her first big decisions. But she held off on using the money to fund any of the piecemeal needs at the huge institution. “This kind of unrestricted gift doesn’t come to a university president often in your life — I said, ‘I’m going to take time,’” Folt said. “It was a chance to really do something large.”

The Lord Foundation of California had been supporting engineering, technology, business and other programs at USC for about four decades; Folt followed the funder’s longtime interests, and “made the decision that it was going to be a big move in the frontiers of computing.” Planning went on through the pandemic with construction and additional fundraising toward the rest of the $1-billion-plus initiative well underway.

“I think we all know the biggest philanthropy goes with the biggest ideas,” Folt said.

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