CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (WVIR) – At the University of Virginia, a major gift from a Charlottesville donor is funding an expansion of a school that didn’t exist just five years ago.
Today, School of Data Science Dean Philip Bourne said its original building quickly outgrew it.
“It’s a big deal for us,” Bourne said. “It’s really the next phase of the school’s development, which has been kind of a meteoric kind of event.” »
As founding dean, Bourne helped start the school five years ago and has witnessed its expansion from a staff of five to 160 during that time.
The Charlottesville-based Quantitative Foundation donated $120 million to help start the school, marking the largest private donation the school has received in hundreds of years.
“The initial donation was simply transformational,” Bourne said. “We were the first data science school in the United States, and that really allowed us to become, I think, one of the best, at least in our opinion.”
Now, the Quantitative Foundation is giving another $20 million to the school.
“The latest gift… from the Quantitative Foundation through Jaffray Woodriff is to actually build the second building,” Bourne said. “Our first building is already full. »
Bourne attributes the school’s rapid growth and outpacing of its facilities to job market demand and said various industries now expect at least some data science knowledge.
“It’s become sort of, you know, the fuel of the economy, and students recognize that,” Bourne said.
The thousands of students now enrolled in the School of Data Science are a testament to that demand, Bourne said.
“The interest in this is huge and because they realize that you have to have at least some data skills to actually be able to get almost any job,” Bourne said.
The $20 million donation will fund the construction of a new building in the Emmett Ivy corridor. However, the funding came with a stipulation. The university has until 2028 to use the money for construction.
“These things take time, but it’s a very tight schedule,” Bourne said.
The cost of the building is estimated at $60 million. Bourne said the expansion was worth every penny.
“We now have a pretty rich research ecosystem, so you know we provide a number of services to the community,” Bourne said. “So it’s a credit to everyone at the school that we’ve done so much and clearly the gifts really help.”
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