Private Giving
Penn State Intercom......January 24, 2002

Richard King Mellon
Foundation gives $3 million

The Richard King Mellon Foundation of Pittsburgh has made a leadership gift of $3 million to help construct a new home for The Smeal College of Business Administration on the University Park campus. The new building will contain classrooms, labs, specialized learning areas, program spaces, and faculty and leadership offices.

The University's five-year capital improvement plan calls for a $60 million Business Building, financed by $35 million in University funds and $25 million in private support. Completion is scheduled by the fall of 2005.

Previous beneficiaries of Richard King Mellon Foundation gifts to Penn State include the Paterno Library building fund, and programs in sports medicine, engineering, animal science, and forest and natural resource conservation. Judy Olian, dean of The Smeal College of Business Administration, noted that the new building will greatly advance the college's aspirations to rank in the top tier of the nation's best business schools.

According to Olian, undergraduate classes for business students currently are spread across a half-dozen campus buildings, and the existing Business Administration Building will have difficulty keeping pace with rapid developments in technology as they affect business. Among the features planned for the new Business Building are classrooms, specialized instructional studios, research laboratories, team study rooms, faculty and graduate student offices, an auditorium, interview rooms, executive space for visiting experts and administrative offices.

At an estimated 210,000 square feet, the Business Building is projected to be the largest academic building on the University Park campus and part of one of the largest business school complexes in the nation.

Richard King Mellon (1899-1970), banker and conservationist, established the foundation in 1947. Today, the Richard King Mellon Foundation ranks among the largest independent foundations in the United States. It has supported programs in economic development, education, human services, medicine, youth and child development, and land and wildlife conservation, and has taken special interest in activities that improve the quality of life in southwestern Pennsylvania.

Gift supports ethics
program in engineering

A $250,000 gift commitment from Charles E. “Chick” and Joan F. Rolling of Helena, Mont., will benefit programs in the Colleges of Engineering and the Liberal Arts.

Chick Rolling is a 1960 University graduate in aerospace engineering.

The Charles E. “Chick” and Joan F. Rolling Program Fund in Engineering and Ethics will support programs such as seminars and interactive workshops designed to address ethical issues related to the practice of engineering.

The planned programs and seminars will be administered through the College of Engineering’s Leonhard Center for the Enhancement of Engineering Education and the College of the Liberal Arts’ Rock Ethics Institute.
The two already have started collaborating on three major projects. First, a series of summer workshops slated for 2002, “Teaching Engineering Ethics,” will provide tools and curricular development support for engineering faculty to incorporate ethical analysis as a regular part of the engineering curriculum.

Second, the Leonhard Center and Rock Ethics Institute are collaborating on a community-built sustainable housing initiative. The initiative includes an interdisciplinary service-learning course that will bring together engineering students and Schreyer Honors College students to explore how sustainable building methods, including strawbale construction, can be used to improve poor living conditions on American Indian reservations.

The course will teach students about design and construction issues of strawbale buildings in the context of the physical and cultural environment in which the construction is taking place. The class also will explore ethical issues involved in cross-cultural interaction and compare the ethical views of the Northern Cheyenne and Europeans.

Students involved in the project will spend two weeks on location in Montana to help build a strawbale structure.
Finally, the Rock Ethics Institute will hold its inaugural symposium, “Ethics,” March 14 to 16 at The Nittany Lion Inn. The conference will discuss issues including stem cell research and bioengineering, social equality, research integrity and ethics in animal science.

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