In what is being described as the single largest donation to an American liberal arts college, Claremont McKenna College is announcing today a $200-million gift to establish a new master's degree in finance and to fund scholarships for undergraduates who show leadership potential.
The donation is from Robert Day, a college alumnus and trustee who is founder and chairman of the Trust Co. of the West, an investment management firm headquartered in downtown Los Angeles. Forbes magazine recently estimated Day's fortune at $1.6 billion and ranked him 297 in its listing of the 400 richest Americans.
His gift is unusual for its huge size in relation to the small college, which enrolls just 1,140 students and specializes in public policy and economics.
The gift, which has sparked some debate on campus, would create Claremont McKenna's first graduate program, a one-year master's for 50 students that would entail the hiring of eight professors. In addition, as many as 50 students from all five undergraduate schools at the Claremont Colleges consortium would be eligible for senior year grants requiring them to take courses in finance, accounting and leadership psychology.
Day said both programs, collectively called the Robert Day Scholars, would offer financial training to future leaders of business, government and nonprofits, with an emphasis on ethics. The goal is to create a cadre of young people "who show leadership and who have judgment, which is the hardest thing to find," he said Wednesday.
Day, the grandson of Superior Oil Co. founder William M. Keck, said he decided not to fund a new building on campus.
"Everybody wants their name on a building," but his goal instead was ongoing education, he said at his Figueroa Street office, which is decorated with photos of Day posing with presidents George W. Bush and Clinton and with a model of a 1950s oil rig his grandfather built in the Louisiana swamps.
Claremont McKenna President Pamela Gann expressed deep appreciation for the donation, saying the Day program would offer "the best possible curriculum, internships and leadership development for preparation to lead in a fast-changing world."
However, the gift has triggered debate on the 50-acre campus in Claremont. Some professors, while recognizing the generosity, said they worried that the money could tilt the college too much toward economics and financial studies. A letter to Gann, drafted by literature department chairman Robert Faggen and signed by other literature professors, said they are concerned that the gift will "distort the college into a single focus trade school."
