Johns Hopkins gets $50M donation for new business school

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Baltimore (AP) – William Polk Carey, chairman and founder of real estate company
W.P. Carey & Co., has donated $50 million to Johns Hopkins University, which
the college will use to establish a business school.

The W.P. Carey Foundation gift is the largest ever to Hopkins for business
education. The Carey Business School will start operating Jan. 1, the university
said late Monday in a news release. Carey is a trustee emeritus of Hopkins.

The business program, which has been part of the School of Professional Studies
in Business and Education, will now be a separate school and will add a five-year
bachelor’s-MBA program to its offerings. A separate education school will
also begin operation at the start of next year.

“The key to future economic growth is quality business education, and
this school will be dedicated to producing our country’s next generation
of business leaders,” the university quoted Carey as saying, adding that
the establishment of a business school at Johns Hopkins had been a dream of
his for more than 50 years.

“More than a century ago, Johns Hopkins University forever broke the mold
in American medical and graduate education, establishing revolutionary new approaches
that remain central even today to the preparation of physicians and scholars,”
said university President William R. Brody in a statement. “Bill Carey’s
generosity makes it possible for Johns Hopkins to break the mold again, this
time in the education of our nation’s leaders in finance, industry and
entrepreneurship.”

The new school is named for Carey’s great-great-great grandfather, James
Carey, an 18th- and 19th-century Baltimore shipper and member of Baltimore’s
first City Council.

Hopkins says it will raise an additional $50 million for the business school,
and will launch a national search for a dean, Brody said. Ralph Fessler, dean
of the School of Professional Studies in Business and Education, will head the
education school.

This is Carey’s second funding of a business school. In 2003, he donated
$50 million to Arizona State University to establish W.P. Carey School of Business
there.