UCSD Tops Goal; Raises $32 Million in Two Years

UC San Diego has exceeded its $30.4-million fund-raising goal by $2 million, with donations from wealthy San Diegans leading the way.

UCSD has raised $32,588,628 since it began its largest fund-raising drive in history in September, 1985. The funds are for new buildings and endowed programs at the La Jolla campus.

“The targeted projects were critically needed but could not be financed with state funding,” said Chancellor Richard C. Atkinson. “With such generous support from the community, UCSD will be in a much better position to sustain the excellence of our programs and facilities and to accommodate the rapid growth we’re experiencing.”

Large Donations

Among individual gifts from San Diegans were $2 million from Sol Price and his family, for a new University Center; $1.6 million from Florence Riford, for endowed chairs in Alzheimer’s disease and AIDS research, and a library collection on the Pacific Rim; $1.1 million from Helen Hillyer, for medical school scholarships, and $1 million from Ida and Cecil Green, for a faculty club.

The Price family’s $2-million donation will help fund an $18-million student center that will include restaurants, a ballroom, theater and bookstore. Sol Price is founder of the Price Club retail outlets.

Foundations contributed $9 million, including $6 million from the Stephen and Mary Birch Foundation (headed by Patrick and Rose Patek of San Diego), the largest donation received by UCSD in its 27-year history. It will help fund a new 31,000-square-foot aquarium and ocean science center at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

The new aquarium, which will double the size of the current aquarium, will include 36 tanks ranging in size up to 30,000 gallons. They will display marine animals in natural-appearing habitats representing the coast of California and the Sea of Cortez in Mexico.

The foundation was formed in 1938 and has made previous donations to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Stephen Birch was a mining industry executive.

Also, alumni, students and parents gave $2.3 million; UCSD faculty and staff contributed $2.6 million; local corporations, $1.5 million.

The money also will be used for faculty and student recruitment, research libraries and visiting scholar and artist programs.

“Such endowments are essential to the very mission of the university,” Atkinson said. “They directly support our teaching, research and clinical programs.”

The fund-raising drive was aided by a blue-ribbon committee led by savings and loan executive Kim Fletcher, mortgage banker Malin Burnham and Patterson Hyndman.

Although the drive surpassed its goal, fund raising continues for other projects.