 |
|
Alums Donate Real Life Experience to Students
“The trip was wonderful for a couple of reasons,” says Meany, an adjunct associate professor of urban planning. “It highlighted the caring of alumni. And it showed that a CUA education is more than just classroom books and learning — it’s about people and it’s about keeping contact. The students said they could never have learned so much in a classroom.” Second-year graduate student Ana Maria Correa, who’s from Colombia, South America, was one of those students, and she says the two-day trip changed the way she thinks about her career. “I learned how the role of every player in commercial real estate is important, that this is a team effort,” she says. That kind of experience is exactly what Vincent O’Neill hoped to give students. A politics major at CUA who has been in the commercial real estate business for 10 years, the last four heading his own firm (VinCo Properties), O’Neill knows that students benefit when they get a taste of the real world. He felt the best way to give students this exposure was to invite them to Boston, where his business is based. O’Neill is one of a growing number of CUA alumni helping their alma mater by sharing their time, contacts and expertise. In O’Neill’s case, he threw in the airplane tickets, too. “In-kind giving is an interesting and much-appreciated way for alumni, friends and corporations to support CUA, above and beyond the financial contributions made by donors,” says Robert Sullivan, vice president for university development. While such in-kind contributions flow into many schools of the university, this method of giving seems to work especially well in the School of Architecture and Planning. “We have prominent alumni dispersed across the country,” says Randall Ott, the school’s dean. Through them, “students see incredible environments they wouldn’t see otherwise.” For instance, Michael Gaughan, B.S.Arch. 1992, has arranged and subsidized two trips to Las Vegas for CUA architecture students, one four years ago and another last January. The latest excursion gave 15 students a close-up view of several different building projects, including a homeless shelter and a desert spa. Most impressive were the behind-the-scenes tours that Gaughan, the vice president and general manager of the South Coast Casino, provided the CUA students. “Many students said this was the greatest field trip they’d ever taken because they had a chance to look at the back of the house and the kitchens of these vast 2,000-room casino-hotels,” says Stanley Hallet, professor of architecture, who accompanied the group of students in Las Vegas. Hallet estimates that Gaughan’s contribution ended up being “in the five figures.” In another way, however, the value was incalculable. “What happens is that students come back very excited about the trip, word gets out and future students are attracted to the school. And this is adding to the consistently high enrollment for the school of architecture,” Hallet says. Giving one’s time and expertise has benefits for donors, too. For Mike Gaughan it’s the joy of helping students directly. “I know the school needs donations — they have bills to pay — but this way the kids get the direct benefit of the money,” he says. “Every student we’ve dealt with has been outstanding. I can’t even imagine what it would have been like coming to Las Vegas when I was in college!” Another advantage of in-kind giving is that it can involve donors in the on-campus life of the university. One of the architecture and planning school’s most generous benefactors is Rick Lessard, B.S.Arch. 1974, whose Virginia-based architecture firm, the Lessard Group, has helped the school in numerous ways, from donating computers to designing the new elevator in the Edward M. Crough Center for Architectural Studies. Some of the in-kind giving at the School of Architecture and Planning involves pro-bono teaching or consulting, which lets alumni share their own concerns and expertise. “Donors get a bully pulpit to talk about issues they care about,” Dean Ott says. “Mike Gaughan is a big booster of Las Vegas and his intention is to get people to see that Las Vegas has changed, that there is a great richness to it. Vince O’Neill, for his part, wants the school to get serious about real estate development.” “CUA has a great architecture school, a great law school and a great engineering school. And D.C. is a terrific place to study real estate,” says O’Neill, who believes that these strengths are a good reason to add a commercial real estate development concentration to the architecture and planning school. It would add another dimension to designing buildings — owning them. One of the most exciting aspects of alumni involvement is how it keeps students up-to-date on cutting-edge technology and design. As co-founders of the firm 365 Main, Chris Dolan, B.S.Arch. 1995, and Jamie McGrath, B.S.Eng. 1994, own and operate centers in San Francisco and Los Angeles that protect many companies’ mission-critical data. The facilities, designed by Dolan and his team of consultants, provide for the security and survival of data in the event of natural disasters and other occurrences. “These buildings have a new kind of infrastructure that emerged from the dot-com days that we have not had the opportunity to study at CUA,” explains Ann Cederna, an associate professor of architecture. “There are only a dozen or so designed and built to the level that Chris and Jamie have achieved with their facilities.” The students in a studio class of Cederna’s traveled to California to study the San Francisco facility and talked with Chris Dolan and the consultants who helped design and build the data center. Dolan also lectured at CUA last fall on mission-critical data centers, donating his time and paying several of his consultants to lecture at the school as well. “Architecture schools traditionally do not expose students to such infrastructure-intense design programs,” Dolan says. “I felt it was important to share my experiences with the students and to give back to CUA.” Dolan and McGrath have donated more than $20,000 in cash and out-of-pocket expenses to CUA. “In-kind giving can be very creative and inventive,” says Professor Meany. “There are so many ways to contribute to the school beyond what we consider traditional contributions by alums.” One of the projects Meany is working on is establishing what O’Neill has been suggesting for years — a real estate development program within CUA’s architecture and planning school. “We’ve gotten about $30,000 worth of in-kind contributions to launch this program,” she says. “I feel strongly that the program has a greater chance of success if I reach out to alums for their help. Every time I ask they say, ‘Yes, I want to help. I was the recipient of a wonderful education and I want to help someone else have one.’ ” Donors considering in-kind gifts to the university should know that the IRS has specific guidelines for these contributions, as listed on the Web site www.IRS.gov. To speak to a member of the CUA development staff about in-kind giving, call 202-319-6910. – A.C. |
Return to the CUA Magazine Contents Page Return to the CUA Public Affairs Home Page Revised: November 2005 All contents copyright © 2005. |
The students in architecture Professor Judith Meany’s commercial real estate class knew they would learn about market analysis and project feasibility, but they had no idea they would be flying all the way to Boston to do it. They did, though, thanks to the generosity of Vincent O’Neill, B.A. 1993, a commercial real estate developer who arranged and paid for 10 students to fly to Boston, tour several construction projects and talk shop with working developers and mortgage bankers. 