Claremont McKenna College Friday announced a $40 million gift from the W.M. Keck Foundation to support a new sciences center designed to prepare students for “leadership within a modern global economy.”
The Robert Day Sciences Center will house the college’s new integrated sciences program. Day is a CMC alumnus, 50-year trustee, Keck Foundation chair and CEO.
“Students of today must learn how to solve the complex problems of tomorrow,” Day said. “This new center will provide a powerful platform for innovation in pursuit of CMC’s leadership mission to seize the opportunities of scientific discovery and responsibly put them to work in the economy and our democracy.”
The college said the center will involve all disciplines, applied research and hands-on learning opportunities.
“The Keck Foundation is proud to partner in support of CMC’s extraordinary vision, bringing the best in philanthropic support for the sciences together with the best in liberal arts education,” said Joe Day, co-president of the Keck Foundation. “We are proud of the distinctive architecture, its impact on CMC’s beautiful campus and ways in which the facility will build a community of scholars in shared purpose.”
Located on the eastern edge of the current campus, at the corner of Ninth Street and Claremont Boulevard, the Robert Day Sciences Center aims to create a strong impression, while marking a series of campus developments and improvements.
“We are immensely grateful to Robert Day and the Keck Foundation for this transformational support,” said CMC President Hiram E. Chodosh. “This is a dream come true: a stunning home for integrating world-class experimental and computational sciences with CMC’s outstanding strengths in the social sciences and the humanities. Here, we will prepare responsible leaders at the critical intersections — known and unknown — of science, economics, policy, ethics and other important fields to take on the big challenges and opportunities of our time.”
