USC to receive $260-million gift, one of largest in higher education, underscoring its fundraising strength

USC announced Wednesday that it would receive a $260-million gift for teaching and research, among the largest single donations in American higher education that underscores the university’s standing as a fundraising juggernaut.

The gift from the Lord Foundation of California will be used to bolster academic disciplines that study artificial intelligence, big data and analytics, and to support various faculty research that advances the public good, according to USC Provost Charles F. Zukoski.

“This tremendous distribution of funds provides us with one of the greatest opportunities in our history to think boldly and to invest in cutting-edge and strategic initiatives that accelerate our research and teaching to address major societal issues for decades to come,” President Carol L. Folt said in a statement.

The gift would rank 34th among major gifts to higher education institutions since 1967, according to a tally maintained by the Chronicle of Higher Education.

USC is one of four beneficiaries of the recent sale of the North Carolina-based LORD Corp. Three related foundations that support the Cleveland Clinic, Duke University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology also have received equal distributions from approximately $1 billion of the corporate sale proceeds.

The foundations were created by entrepreneur Thomas Lord, whose father, Hugh Lord, founded the LORD Corp. in 1924. The firm became a global company focusing on noise and vibration control products, electric-mechanical innovations, automotive and aerospace applications and chemical products, including specialty adhesives.

Thomas Lord believed in private institutions as an alternative to government in providing solutions to social and economic problems. In the 1980s, when Lord was planning his estate, he set out to identify geographically diverse institutions that had an emphasis on research, innovation and technology to carry on his legacy, said former LORD Corp. head Edward Auslander, who worked at the company from 1985 to 2019.

“What really impressed Thom Lord and [then board chairman] Don Alstadt … was USC’s connection between the engineering school and the business school,” Auslander said.

Lord established the foundations supporting the four organizations and gave each of them shares in his company. When the company was acquired by Parker-Hannifin Corp. in April for approximately $3.675 billion, those shares were liquidated and each foundation automatically became entitled to a distribution of proceeds.

Since 1980, the Lord Foundation of California has funded a variety of teaching and research initiatives at USC, including the Girls Who Code Summer Immersion Program, the social enterprise lab and business competition program at the USC Marshall School of Business and the Space Engineering Research Center at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering.

The foundation is expected to distribute the proceeds to USC in 2020 following legally required approvals.

“Quite simply, this is a provost’s dream,” Zukoski said.

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