Ann
Lee Brown, wife of the late Charles L. Brown '43, has donated
$5 Million to the University of Virginia School of Engineering
and Applied Science.
Mrs. Brown's generous donation, made in honor of her husband,
will be used to establish an endowment in the Department
of Electrical and Computer Engineering. The funds generated
from the endowment will be used to fund graduate fellowships,
which will allow the department to attract top graduate
student candidates. According to Acting Dean James Aylor,
the expansion this gift makes possible is a significant
step in the planned growth of the Engineering School and
in improvement of the sciences at the University. "The
future of Engineering here is dependent on our being able
to attract and support top quality graduate students and
to hire outstanding faculty, something that is easier to
do when you have excellent graduate students available to
support their research. This gift goes a long way toward
making that possible."
The funds will also support course improvements, including development of new courses, new material for existing courses, and laboratory improvements. Undergraduate student will benefit from the gift in the form of funding for summer research experiences as well.
"This gift will make a tremendous difference to the faculty and students in the department and to the school," Lloyd Harriott, chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering, said. " It will help us stand out and take advantage of our strengths and will help us rise to a leadership position in electrical engineering education and research." One significant improvement that will come from the gift will be improvement of the 2nd year labs. "Our undergraduate students experience the field of electrical and computer engineering for the first time in their second year of school and we want those labs to be the best learning experience possible," he said.
In acknowledgement of the gift, the department will be renamed the Charles L. Brown Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. This is the first named department at the University of Virginia and it is a wonderful thing that such a distinguished alumni would be honored in this way.
Mrs. Brown also made a donation of $500,000 to the Jefferson Scholars Program. The merit-based Charles L. Brown Jefferson Scholarship is the first Jefferson Scholarship ever established for an engineering student.
Mr. Brown, a native of Richmond, Virginia was a 1943 graduate of the Engineering School, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering.
Following his graduation, Mr. Brown was a member of the Navy until 1946 and served aboard the USS Mississippi in the WWII Pacific theatre. After his discharge, he worked for AT&T for over 40 years and served as CEO and Chairman from 1979-1986. In 1982, he successfully divested AT&T's local phone business, the largest corporate reorganization in U.S. history, to settle Federal antitrust litigation. In the process, he created business entities that produced average annual returns to investors of 25%, reinvigorated AT&T's research and development efforts and initiated AT&T global partnerships in Europe and Asia.
As an engineering working in microelectronics at Bell Labs from 1980-2001, Harriott was aware of Mr. Brown's gifts as a leader. "The early 80's were tough times. We were all worried about what was going to happen after the breakup of the company. Mr. Brown was always a calm and steady presence, making us all believe that all would be well.
In 1980, Mr. Brown was the guest speaker at U.Va. Final Exercises and noted that it was a substantially different place both in size and in breadth and scope of its excellence. He said at the time that he owed it to the institution to do whatever he could to help it continue to improve and for the rest of his life he remained true to that pledge.
During the 1980s, he was on the steering committee of the University's first comprehensive fund raising campaign and completed a term on the Board of Visitors, 1986-1990. In the 1993-2000 Capital Campaign, Mr. Brown served as vice chairman of the executive committee and as chair of the National Leadership Gifts Council, a coast-to-coast network of campaign volunteers, who helped to organize regional campaigns in some thirty cities around the country.
Mr.
Brown also served on the boards of Chemical Bank, Delta
Airlines, DuPont, General Foods and Metropolitan Life. Other
nonprofit leadership included Colonial Williamsburg, the
Public Broadcasting System, the Institute for Advanced Studies,
Boy Scouts of America, YMCA and the National Parks Foundation.
In addition to his degree from the University of Virginia, he held honorary doctorates conferred by Colgate University, Princeton University, Amherst College, Northwestern University and Pace University.
"Mr. Brown's connection to the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and his successes after he left us are a matter of great pride to this school and to the University. We are honored to name the department after him, a man who exemplified Jeffersonian ideals as an ethical, intelligent and creative leader.
Group photo: Left to right: James H. Aylor, dean; Thomas
N. Connors; Lloyd Harriott, chair of the Department of Electrical
and Computer Engineering; Ann Lee Brown; Richard W. Miksad;
Charles L. Brown Jr.; Alex Brown. Also pictured above: Charles
L. Brown
