Sam Walton built a retailing chain in northwest Arkansas that grew from relative obscurity to national prominence. Officials at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville hope the Walton touch will help its business school attain similar recognition.
The Walton Family Charitable Support Foundation’s recent $50 million donation to the UA College of Business Administration is viewed as a high-octane injection to raise the school’s stature among its peers.
“We believe that will indeed propel us into the higher ranks of business schools,” says Doyle Williams, dean of the college.
The Walton family has converted a portion of its wealth of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. stock into a $1 billion war chest for benevolence. Charity watchers are wondering where the Waltons will next turn their philanthropic gaze.
“I’m sorry; we don’t give interviews,” says Stewart Springfield, director of the Walton Foundation in Bentonville.
In recognition of the $50 million gift, the UA board of trustees is expected to approve renaming the business school the Sam M. Walton College of Business Administration at its Nov. 6 meeting.
The endowment is touted as the largest ever given to an American business school and ranks among the 40 largest gifts given to any university since 1967.
“We believe that a nationally competitive business school at Arkansas’ flagship university will be a cornerstone of economic development for our state and region and will make important contributions to the national and global marketplace as well,” Helen Walton, Sam Walton’s widow, said in a prepared statement.
In February 1996, Helen Walton donated $4 million to the UA business school to establish an endowed chair in finance named for her only daughter, Alice, who founded Llama Co. 10 years ago. Alice Walton recently stepped down as chief executive officer but remains chairman of the investment firm.
At the time, the gift from Helen Walton was the single largest ever to the business college, and the family’s donations to the Fayetteville campus don’t stop there.
An additional $10 million from the Waltons has endowed the Sam M. Walton Leadership Chair and Wal-Mart Chair in Marketing as well as funded the Walton Family African-American Future Educator Conference, the Great Expectations of Arkansas Program and the Helen Robson Walton Reading Room in Mullins Library.
The recent gift from the foundation boosts the endowment total for the University of Arkansas and the University of Arkansas Foundation to about $190 million.
Recruiting Tool
UA officials are more concerned about where the business college doesn’t rank more so than its precise position among the constellation of schools in the nation.
“It’s not yet among the top 50 business schools,” says Roger Williams, associate vice chancellor of University Relations. “It’s hoped that this gift will enable us to move into the top echelon.”
While it’s unclear where the UA business college falls in national rankings, the assessment of the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville as a whole is more clear.
According to U.S. News & World Report, the university ranks somewhere on the low-end of magazine’s third tier (118-167) among national universities. The magazine ranked 227 colleges among four tiers using broad criteria such as academic reputation, student retention, faculty resources, financial resources, alumni giving and graduation rate performance.
Of the recent $50 million gift, $1.8 million will be spent to improve the business school’s technology systems. The remaining $48.2 million will fund a permanent endowment.
In round numbers, the Walton endowment should produce $1.9 million-$2.4 million annually for the business college. Nearly a third of the funds will be dedicated to augment state-funded faculty salaries to better position the school for recruiting and retaining world-class professors.
“The key obviously starts with a high-quality faculty who have national stature,” Williams says. “They determine the educational experience for students.”
In addition to salary supplements, the endowment income will be divided among seven other funding categories. Based on an estimated return of 4.5 percent, the endowment would yield the following breakdown:
o Faculty Salary Support, $675,000
o Centers and Programs, $432,000
o Student Scholarship and Educational Enrichment, $360,000
o Faculty Development, $207,000
o Academic Program Development, $180,000
o Technology and Distance Education, $180,000
o Uncommitted, $96,795
o Donald W. Reynolds Center for Enterprise Development, $38,205
Later this fall, the business college will open the new Donald W. Reynolds Center for Enterprise Development. The project was funded with a $7.4 million grant from the building’s namesake foundation.
The business school will launch a new M.B.A. program next July. Featuring competency-based admittance, the 12-month program will use course work modules as opposed to full-semester classes.
The focus will be on a real-world project for a private-sector company. The business school also is developing an honors program.
Besides attracting first-rate students, improvements in the college are expected to further aid career placement.
“We take very seriously our role and responsibility for helping our students recruit those first jobs,” Williams says.
The Walton announcement coincides with Williams signing on for a second five-year tour of duty as dean. He was recruited from the University of Southern California in 1993.
UA College of Business
Administration
Founded: 1926
1998 Enrollment: 2,561 undergraduates and 237 graduate students
Faculty: 97
Majors: Accounting, computer information systems and quantitative analysis, economics, finance, management, marketing and transportation and logistics
Endowments: 28 privately funded endowments range from $87,000 to $48.2 million
Report of Gifts to UA College
of Business Administration
School No. of
Year Gifts Value
1998-99* 457 $1,794,502
1997-98 2,469 6,997,872
1996-97 2,918 2,248,675
1995-96 2,514 2,384,985
1994-95 2,290 1,200,196
*-As of Sept. 30, 1998Top Tier Undergraduate Business Programs
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge
University of California at Berkeley
Carnegie-Mellon University (Pa.), Pittsburgh
Indiana University, Bloomington
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
University of Texas, Austin
University of Virginia, Charlottesville
New York University
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Pennsylvania State University, State College
Purdue University, West Lafayette, Ind.
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
University of Southern California, Los Angeles
Ohio State University, Columbus
University of Washington, Seattle
Washington University, St. Louis
Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland
Michigan State University, East Lansing
University of Maryland, College Park
University of Arizona, Tucson
Source: U.S. News & World Report. Rankings were originally published in 1996 and have not been updated.
Big Gifts to University of Arkansas at Fayetteville
o $50 million in 1998 from the Walton Family Charitable Support Foundation of Bentonville.
o $23.5 million in 1988 from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to establish the Middle East Studies Program.
o $15 million in 1991 from James “Bud” Walton, co-founder of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., to pay the lion’s share of building a new basketball arena.
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