The donation is the biggest pledge ever made to a domestic engineering school
A Queen's University sign sits at the corner of Union St. and University Ave. on the university's campus in Kingston, Ont.Two years ago, financial services billionaire Stephen Smith quietly approached Queen’s University’s engineering school with an offer to donate $50-million, a gift aimed at better preparing graduates to solve society’s most complex problems.
“Right now, we teach engineers how to build a bridge,” Mr. Smith said in an interview. “We need to teach them to think about how that bridge impacts a community, how it impacts the environment. That’s a new approach to learning.” Since 2019, the number of donors to postsecondary institutions fell by 4 per cent, according to a study published in March by the Canadian Council for the Advancement of Education. Less than 1 per cent of all donors – 2,044 individuals and organizations – accounted for 84 per cent of new gifts.
“My goal is to help Queen’s build the country’s top engineering school – one that’s recognized as among the best in the world,” said Mr. Smith, who earned an electrical engineering degree from the school in 1972. His donation also reflects the executive’s satisfaction with his previous gift to the business program, which he said “has surpassed my high expectations.”
Mr. Smith’s donations to Queen’s are among the largest ever made to a domestic university, as entrepreneurs increase the size of their gifts to build globally competitive institutions. In return for his gifts, Mr. Smith will have his name on both the engineering and business schools at Queen’s. A generation back, entrepreneurs could count on seeing their name on a campus building after donating $20-million.
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