 |
GIFT FROM ABOVE: The Munger
residences will house 600 students.
Courtesy Land and Buildings |
ALTHOUGH STANFORD accommodates
57 percent of its graduate students on campus, its aim
is to house at least 80 percent. Now that dream is a
step closer to reality, thanks to a $43.5 million donation
from prominent lawyer and businessman Charles T. Munger
and his wife Nancy B. Munger, ’45. The gift, which
will support construction of a new campus residential
complex for law, business and other graduate students,
is believed to be the largest ever given outright to
an American law school and the largest earmarked for
student housing in Stanford’s history.
Construction of the Munger Graduate Residences is tentatively
scheduled to begin next summer. When completed in the
spring of 2007, the modern apartment complex will house
600 students, half from the Law School. The three-building
cluster will sit on six acres currently occupied by
a parking lot adjacent to the Law School and Stern Hall.
The first floor of the tallest building will provide
a meeting and gathering space open to all Stanford graduate
students. The project also will include a 750-space
subterranean parking structure. Total cost of the residences
and related projects is estimated at just over $100
million.
Praising the gift, President John Hennessy noted that
“in recent years there have been few more pressing
issues at Stanford than the need to construct student
housing, especially for graduate students.” The
problem became acute during the Silicon Valley boom
of the late 1990s, when off-campus rents soared and
some students wound up sleeping in their cars. More
recently, University building projects have been stalled
by budget cuts and concerns over debt load.
Besides easing the housing shortage, the Munger gift
will have important long-term benefits for the University
as a whole. Stanford’s General Use Permit with
Santa Clara County includes provisions that require
housing to be built before construction can proceed
on new academic buildings. The graduate student residence
will free Stanford to move forward with plans for a
replacement of the Terman Engineering Center, modern
classroom facilities for business and medical school
students, a building to house the new Institute for
the Environment and a new facility for the department
of art and art history. The gift also will help ease
overcrowding in some undergraduate residences by opening
rooms in Crothers Hall and Crothers Memorial now used
by graduate students.
Munger, 80, is the vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway
and founded the law firm of Munger, Tolles & Olson.
While he did not attend Stanford, Nancy served on the
Board of Trustees and several of the couple’s
children and grandchildren attended the University.
Daughter Wendy, ’72, is a current member of the
Board of Trustees. |
