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Engineering college receives $50 million


What's the difference between "good" and "world class"? For the second time in six months, the answer for ASU is $50 million.

ASU President Michael Crow said Ira Fulton's $50 million grant to ASU's engineering school in June would boost the quality and profile of the program.

"ASU has a good engineering school, but it takes resources like Mr. Fulton's $50 million gift to be world class," Crow said.

The gift follows William Carey's $50 million grant in January for naming rights to the W. P. Carey School of Business. As with the previous grant, Fulton's donation will be used to fund a variety of faculty positions, scholarships and research projects, Crow said.

"We can fund programs and research that will tackle diseases, improve quality of life for the disabled and invent new technologies that can change the world in ways we can't even imagine, " Crow said.

Ben Huey, an associate dean at the Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering, said the research would largely be conducted with humanitarian goals in mind, citing projects such as defenses against bioterrorism and work on new prosthetics.

"I don't think it's going to make the college larger," Huey said. "I think it will allow us to be more creative with what we do with our students."

Crow said the gift comes from Fulton's belief in the importance of the engineering school to the rest of the state.

"Ira is an extremely generous person who believes in giving back, particularly when his generosity can have such an immediate and significantly positive impact," Crow said.

The gift should boost an already improving engineering school, Huey said. The school, which ranked 37th nationally in the most recent U.S. News & World Report listings, increased research funding more than 200 percent from 1994 to the present.

"We certainly intend to be in the top 25 schools in the country... this will enhance the rate at which we do that," Huey said.

Reach the reporter at garrett.neese@asu.edu.


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