After receiving a $50 million pledge, Iowa State University officials announced Monday that they want to name the university's College of Business after donors Debbie and Jerry Ivy of Los Altos Hills, Calif.
The gift is the largest-ever commitment to the college, according to a university news release Monday. Pending approval from the Iowa Board of Regents, the Debbie and Jerry Ivy College of Business would be the first donor-named college on the Ames campus.
Jerry Ivy, who earned his bachelor’s degree in industrial administration from ISU in 1953, is president and chief executive officer of Auto-Chlor System, where Debbie Ivy is also an active member of the executive team.
The Ivys and their team have turned Auto-Chlor into a national brand with more than 75,000 customers nationwide, according to the release. The company provides cleaning solutions to the food service, health care and lodging industries.
"This is a transformative gift that will exponentially expand the college’s commitment to provide leading-edge programs and modern learning environments, compete for world-class faculty, and increase student scholarships and other high-impact educational opportunities,” said Ben Allen, interim ISU president and a former dean of the business college.
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A earlier gift from the couple established the Ivy Chair in Business, which is currently held by Patricia Daugherty, professor of supply chain management.
“As Debbie explains it, Jerry’s the idea guy, and her job is to make his ideas happen,” Allen said during Monday’s announcement ceremony. “In that case, we are so grateful that Jerry had idea to provide this exceptional gift, and Debbie made it happen.”
If approved, the Ivy College of Business would be the third named college within Iowa’s three public universities.
“When I came to Iowa State, the president and the provost challenged me to raise the profile of this college — to really get the recognition we deserved for the wonderful programs that we offer here every day,” said David Spalding, who has served as dean of the college since 2013. “And there is nothing that raises the profile of a college like being a named college, and to be the first named-college at Iowa State is such an honor for this college.”
It's been 18 years since the University of Iowa named its College of Business in honor of donor Henry Tippie, who had made a gift of $30 million to the college. Two years later, UI officials named the College of Medicine after Roy and Lucille Carver, who had just made a $63 million gift to the college.
Naming decisions at UI, however, have sparked controversy.
After widespread objection on campus in 2007, for example, the university and regents reversed course on a proposal to rename UI's College of Public Health after the nonprofit Wellmark Foundation, an arm of the state’s largest health insurance company, Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield. The foundation had offered a $15 million gift in exchange for the naming rights.
The University of Northern Iowa has no named colleges.
The Ivy's gift will establish an endowed fund that will eventually provide approximately $2 million annually designated to the college.
The college offers nine undergraduate majors, six master’s programs and one doctoral program with five areas of specialization. It has a record enrollment in 2017 with 4,921 students, according to the release.
The announcement to the Ivy gift comes three days after the university announced the Kent Corp. is committing $8 million, the Iowa Corn Promotion Board $4 million and Sukup Manufacturing Co. $2 million in support of a new ISU educational and research facility for feed milling and grain science.
ISU officials said those gifts are the first to be announced for the $21.2 million feed mill and grain science complex, which will be funded entirely through private giving.
The gifts will add to the ISU Foundation’s "Forever True, For Iowa State" campaign, which seeks to raise $1.1 billion for the university by July 2020.
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