Three major gifts to the University were announced at the Board of Trustees' semiannual meeting Dec. 12.

• The MBNA Foundation and the company's executive committee have endowed UD's College of Business and Economics with $20 million in memory of former MBNA chairman and CEO Alfred Lerner, who died in October 2002. In recognition of the endowment, the University has named the college the Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics.
  
  
• The John L. and Sue Ann Weinberg Foundation has pledged $2 million to endow the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance in the College of Business and Economics.
  
  
• The Welfare Foundation has donated 31 acres of land south of the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal in New Castle County, Del., to augment the operations of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. In addition, the private foundation has extended UD a long-term lease on an adjacent 200 acres.

MBNA gift

"We think it's a wonderful combination--combining the name of a man we admire with a University that we admire," MBNA President and UD trustee Charles Cawley said at the board meeting. "We think the University of Delaware is a very, very special place."

In thanking MBNA for its gift, Roselle said, "All of us at the University, and especially those at the Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics, can best deserve the honor of being associated with Al Lerner if we are truthfully able to substitute 'the University of Delaware' for 'MBNA' in his wise admonition about the difference between success and failure. He said, 'The difference is the people of MBNA and the MBNA attitude!'"

"The educational opportunities available to current and future students in business and economics will be greatly enhanced by the generous endowment from MBNA to establish the Lerner College of Business and Economics," UD Provost Dan Rich said. "This extraordinary gift will enable the faculty of the Lerner College to strengthen existing programs and to develop new and innovative programs that will meet the highest standards of academic excellence and be responsive to emerging needs of the business professions they serve."?

"The MBNA Foundation's gift to honor Alfred Lerner and endow the College of Business and Economics is tremendously significant for the college as well as for the University of Delaware," Dean Michael Ginzberg said. "Being a named college puts us in a different class. Beyond the support we will derive from the endowment, this recognition of the college will be noted by others, and it will open many doors for us. It will enable us to do the extra things that can turn a very good business school into an excellent one."

MBNA's history of giving

This gift is the latest in a series of generous gifts from the people of MBNA to the University of Delaware. Previous gifts have supported a named professorship in the College of Business and Economics; the MBNA America Concourse in the Bob Carpenter Sports/Convocation Center; the Downtown Center, a classroom facility in Wilmington; the construction of a new home for the College of Business and Economics, MBNA America Hall; support of the Fortune Program, a recruitment and scholarship program; construction of the new MBNA Career Services Center; and funding for the Polly Russell Dowling Fellowship Endowment, which benefits students in the Professional Theatre Training Program.

Weinberg Foundation gift

The Weinberg Foundation gift will endow the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at UD.

The Center for Corporate Governance was established in UD's College of Business and Economics in 2000 to propose sensible and progressive changes in corporate structure and management through education and interaction. The center provides a forum for business leaders, members of corporate boards, corporate legal scholars and practitioners, jurists, economists, graduate and undergraduate students and others interested in corporate governance issues to meet, to interact, to learn and to teach.

The center is directed by Charles M. Elson, Edgar S. Woolard Jr. Chair of Corporate Governance, who is a nationally recognized authority on this topic.

"We are delighted to honor in this manner an individual whose very name is synonymous with corporate and financial integrity," Elson said. "The naming of the center for John L. Weinberg sends a strong signal of the new found significance of corporate governance in the commercial world and demonstrates confidence in the University of Delaware's role in the corporate governance arena."

"John Weinberg has a distinguished business career, and he does great honor to the University of Delaware by allowing us to associate his name with the Center for Corporate Governance," Roselle said.

"The gift to endow the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance will have lasting value for the partnership between the University and the business community," Rich said. "It provides resources needed for the center to become a focal point for global dialog on some of the most important issues facing business leaders today and for generations to come."

"Corporate governance has been the central story in business for the past two years, and the UD Center for Corporate Governance has become one of the most influential voices in this discussion," according to Ginzberg. "John Weinberg's gift to endow the center will help ensure that we are able to continue and to expand the programs of this very important center."

Welfare Foundation gift

The Welfare Foundation gift of land is expected to benefit the University's agricultural research because the land in southern New Castle County more closely resembles most other Delaware farmland than does the current UD farm on the Newark campus.

"The University is grateful to the Welfare Foundation for its generosity, foresight and continued support of our educational mission," Roselle said. "The students and faculty of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources now will have a new environment to assess products, demonstrate conservation and natural-resource management and educate Delawareans about the importance of agriculture in their lives."

There is no intention to move the dairy herd or other livestock, existing research plots or the teaching and research functions in which students and faculty regularly participate away from the Newark farm. The new site will provide additional or alternative cropland for some of the college's farming operations.

Robin W. Morgan, dean of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, said the new acreage is an important resource because the existing UD farm is at capacity and because the location of the new land complements other farm properties of the college.

"The location is ideal for serving the needs of the local agricultural community, as well as other educational institutions in the state," Morgan said. "It will provide us with a demonstration site for new, high-value crops for Delaware and numerous other projects."

She said the land could serve as a research and demonstration site for sustainable agricultural practices, soil conservation, biofuel plantations and turf grass. Other possible uses include plots for master gardeners and an outdoor woodland classroom. *