David A. Tepper, hedge fund billionaire and a Carnegie Mellon alumnus, has made a gift of $67 million to create a new academic hub in the Pittsburgh campus to be called the David A. Tepper Quadrangle.
"Carnegie Mellon has a long history of providing the world with innovative thinkers," said Tepper, founder of Appaloosa Capital Management, "and the establishment of a true hub for entrepreneurship will help create the next generation of global leaders," Forbes reports.
The donation made though his David A. Tepper Charitable Foundation will also help fund the construction of a 300,000-square-foot building for the school's Tepper School of Business.
This is not his first donation to his alma mater. Tepper of Livingston has donated more than $125 million in gifts over the past nine years, making him the largest donor in the school's history.
"Carnegie Mellon tied everything together for me and gave me a great foundation," said Tepper, a graduate of the university's business school. "My earlier gifts were a payback to the university, and this is a continuation of that," NYTimes reports.
Subra Suresh, former director of the National Science Foundation was welcomed as the university's ninth president on Nov.15.
"David Tepper is a visionary, both as a businessman and a philanthropist, and we are grateful for his generous support of the university and the business school that bears his name," said CMU President Subra Suresh in a statement. "Carnegie Mellon's culture is historically holistic, integrating research and learning among individual schools and academic disciplines. Our vision for the new Tepper Quadrangle builds on these strengths, creating new interdisciplinary interactions for learning and research and connecting innovation to the business community."
