<p>In the past 20 years, many universities have named many of their professional schools for wealthy donors. Some named schools go way back: Penn/Wharton, MIT/Sloan etc. but now some schools like USC have named virtually all of their professional schools for donors. If they run out of professional schools to name, will we end up with the Smith Department of English and the Jones Department of Chemistry etc.?</p>
<p>Also, do you find it confusing in this forum when posters refer to these recently named schools without mentioning the university. E.g. Is the Ross school better than the Gozueta school?"</p>
<p>To end this brief rant, was I the only one who did a double take when they first read about the Fu Foundation School of Engineering at Columbia?</p>
<p>The UW (Madison, not the west coast one) School of Business has kept its name despite a large donation- one of the terms of the donation I believe. I think it is great to name buildings after people with college academic connections (or in the case of a residence dining hall, a cook) but also despise the naming mere money brings. Names have meaning- some of my favorites include these- Snow (a real person) is the top floor house name for a dorm and Chadbourne was a long time women’s dorm (now coed) named after a university official who didn’t want women on campus circa the late 1800’s. There is no charm in naming places after rich donors.</p>
<p>Well, Harvard was named after John Harvard, who bequeathed his books and half his estate to “the college at New Towne.” Said New Towne was renamed Cambridge in honor of the university (Cambridge, UK) of which John Harvard was an alumnus.</p>
<p>The practice is as old as higher education in the United States.</p>
<p>Of the top educational institutions in the country, only a handful aren’t named for a financial benefactor, and even some of them aren’t so pure historically (e.g., Columbia, formerly King’s College). American universities have been selling the name of practically everything for decades. Professional schools are just the latest high-ticket item.</p>
<p>I am a professor in a professional school so this seems like very old news to me and I’m too used to it perhaps. You name the school, but you can also separately name the building, name degreed programs within the school itself, and name the centers and functions within the building, and then the classrooms, halls and so forth. I still recall donors coming down the hall looking for OFFICES to put their name on. I’m not kidding. </p>
<p>We joke about it. You can be going to school at PoDung U, in the Mary Sue undergraduate program at the Bob Gold School of Podiatry,located of course in the M.M.Forest Building, where you must go through the Wayne Blow Hall to drop off your resume at the Debby J. Turner career center. We sometimes get instructed/reminded to use the REAL name for a room rather than the room number (yeah, good luck with that, especially when giving directions to somebody).</p>
<p>LOL At my alma mater, McGill, there is a Fieldhouse Auditorium (named for Noel Fieldhouse, a donor). There is also the Tomlinson Fieldhouse (the recreation center). I guess naming the recreation center the Fieldhouse Fieldhouse would have gone over the line!</p>
<p>Middlebury’s Library is still waiting on a donor to want it named after them… I guess in this case, it was a build it and they will donate to get their name carved in limestone? :)</p>
<p>Well, when you donate $50+ Million you can name a school. The reason USC has gone on a naming binge is precisely because they’ve been raising an incredible amount of money the past 15 years. Interestingly, the largest donation $125 million did result in the renaming of the school but not with the donor’s name. The USC School of Cinematic Arts could be named the Lucas School for Cinematic Arts if he’d wanted.</p>
<p>My husband’s first academic job was at a top private university. When I went to his office for the first time, there was a plaque with someone else’s name on it on the door. I was confused until someone pointed out that all the office doors had little brass plaques with the name of some donor or other. This office was a tiny, windowless, closet-like space reserved for the brand new faculty; I wonder if the donor knew what a cruddy room his name got attached to.</p>
<p>The Bernard Mitchell Hospital at the U Chicago medical center, named after Mr. Bernard Mitchell (of Jovan Musk perfume fame), opened in mid 1980’s. Mr. Mitchell was one of the first patients at this hospital, where he suffered a cardiac arrest and died (as the story goes, partly due to the fact that they would not allow measly residents to run the Code and the famous Attending physicians did not know what to do). Mrs. Mitchell sued the Hospital and they settled out of court for an undisclosed amount of money.</p>
<p>Such a funny thread. We have thought aloud that the only thing we could afford to put our name on might be a chair- not as in a chaired professor position- but an actual chair, in the auditorium. Ever see those little brass plaques at the back of the seat? Or maybe a brick. Or a glass tile with name etched in it. I think they are going for $1k each these days in some buildings. </p>
<p>And what do they do when someone with a very odd name (maybe with odd connotations for the thing they want to sponsor), steps forward with a check?</p>
<p>I think it’s great that USC named their School of Engineering after Andrew Viterbi. He didn’t just give a lot of money, but he also has a history at USC (getting his PhD) and is also a highly regarded researcher having made many advances in communications.</p>
<p>Also, the donations are typically invested into endowment. So the donation continues to support the school for years.</p>
<p>They’re already naming departments here at USC. Just in the Viterbi School of Engineering alone:</p>
<p>Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
The Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science</p>
<p>One wonders what they’ll do if the donor ends up an historical loser: the MySpace School of Communications…the Betamax School of Film? (And before someone corrects me, yes I do know that Sony made Betamax.)</p>
<p>After we visited Olin College, we started to notice all of the Olin engineering buildings on other campuses. We were told that the Olin foundation decided to concentrate the money into building one small new school (which was tuition free until recently).</p>