The list of big spenders is out. A document recording all donations to U of T of $250,000+ has been recently unearthed by the Varsity. The gifts, which cover the period from February to April of this year, total more than $13 million from 14 donors.
Weighing in at a whopping $3 million, the largest contribution was courtesy of John H. Watson.
Watson, a U of T grad, donated the cash to the Rotman School of Management to establish the John H. Watson Chair in Value Investing. This chair will allow for increased teaching and research of value investing, a strategy that finds bargain stocks by targeting companies with undervalued share prices.
Watson did approach U of T first, however, and Brent Johnston, the associate director of donor recognition, insists that proper procedure was followed. “Some people have a very particular slant they want to promote, but if there is not enough academic support and it doesn’t fit the academic plan, then [the donation] is denied,” said Johnston. As value investing is central to the study of business, Watson’s donation was approved.
The spending continued with a cool million from the Associates of the University of Toronto, a non-profit organization that smoothes the way for donations from the U.S. to enter U of T. The gift will go to the Centre for the Study of the United States to provide for new activities and programs, including a speaker series and new courses. The centre will decide how the donation is to be directed, as Professor Rick Halpern, the President of the CSUS, said “the money is completely unfettered.”
The Faculty of Pharmacy was the big winner, with $1 million from SGI Canada Ltd. and $2.4 million from Tripos Inc. The donation went towards a $7.3 million supercomputing and visualization centre. The centre combines state-of-the-art supercomputers and software to generate 3-D images for drug research.
The supercomputer was courtesy of SGI, while the software was supplied by Tripos. Both companies were first approached by the Faculty of Pharmacy, stated Johnston, as “the academic leader of this project believed that they were the best.”
Longtime supporter of the university Dr. Mark Tanz also contributed $1 million to the Centre for Research of Neurodegenerative Diseases. Tanz co-chairs the committee for the centre and has already contributed $5 million to the cause. The million will go towards further research of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease.
Several large donations to U of T have in the past been heavily tinged with controversy. These donations, such as a $13.5 million dollar partnership with Bell Canada forged in 2000, carried conditions and obligations that some charged placed undue restrictions on the university and its researchers.
The University’s Academic Freedom Clause specifically states says that it “does not accept gifts when a condition of such acceptance would compromise these fundamental principles [integrity, autonomy and academic freedom].” Gifts such as Bell’s have been criticized for allegedly breaching these principles.
