Coming soon...The Grainger College of Engineering

4/17/2019

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Grainger College of Engineering
Grainger College of Engineering
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s College of Engineering will become The Grainger College of Engineering, recognizing a new $100 million gift from The Grainger Foundation and more than $300 million in total support, after consultation with the Chancellor’s Joint Advisory Committee on Investment, Licensing, and Naming Rights and pending approval by the University of Illinois Board of Trustees.

The Grainger Foundation’s total support represents the largest amount ever given to a public university to name a college of engineering, with more than $200 million provided in the last six years.

The college will be named in recognition of the contributions of The Grainger Foundation to the excellence of the college and in honor of distinguished alumnus William W. Grainger.

William W. Grainger graduated from the university’s electrical engineering program in 1919 and founded the industrial supply company W. W. Grainger, Inc. in 1927. Grainger is an Illinois-based Fortune 500 company with more than 25,000 employees worldwide.

As part of the naming, The Grainger Foundation will provide the additional $100 million unrestricted gift to the college’s endowment, building upon its past, significant foundational support for even greater impact during the college and university’s ambitious With Illinois campaign and beyond.

“What an anniversary! One hundred years after William W. Grainger graduated from our college, his impact is still felt. We are forever grateful,” Rashid Bashir, dean of The Grainger College of Engineering, said.

“Very few colleges have seen this kind of long-term, flexible support. We are proud to be one of them, and it will allow our research enterprise and educational programs to flourish. It will also allow us to recruit, reward, and retain the very best faculty with more and larger faculty chairs and professorships.”

In addition, The Grainger Foundation is currently matching all gifts to the Engineering Visionary Scholarship Initiative for undergraduates—dollar-for-dollar, up to $25 million. The Grainger Matching Challengewas established in 2017 and runs through the end of 2019.

The new $100 million gift will be very flexible on how its proceeds can be used and what programs it will support long-term.

“We couldn’t appreciate The Grainger Foundation’s trust in us more,” said Chancellor Robert J. Jones. “They believe in our powerful vision, and they’ve invested in it aggressively – supporting people, programs, and facilities. We recently celebrated our first 150 years, and this gift will redefine our next 150.”

“All of us here at The Grainger Foundation are delighted that this gift will further strengthen one of the most distinguished engineering schools in the world,” said David W. Grainger, chairman of The Grainger Foundation.

“To start, we will make big investments in our research enterprise—in the faculty who drive it and the students who learn so much from it. But we know that engineering will change. We will anticipate and lead this change as we always have. In the decades to come, future leadership of The Grainger College of Engineering will be in a great position to shift priorities as necessary and grab new opportunities,” Bashir said.

The Grainger Foundation began providing support to The Grainger College of Engineering’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in 1979. Including the new gift, The Grainger Foundation has committed more than $300 million toward numerous projects, including:

  • The Grainger Center for Electric Machinery and Electromechanics
  • The Grainger Chair in Electrical Engineering
  • The Grainger Power Engineering Awards
  • The Grainger Library and Information Center
  • The redesign of the Bardeen Quad
  • The remodel of Engineering Hall
  • The new Electrical and Computer Engineering Building
  • The Grainger Engineering Breakthroughs Initiative, which included $100 million in support of research, undergraduate scholarships, the renovation of Everitt Lab for the bioengineering department, and faculty chairs and professorships
  • The Engineering Visionary Scholarship Initiative

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This story was published April 17, 2019.