Holiday Surprise

Ira and Mary Lou Fulton donate $100 million to ASU

The faculty, staff and students of Arizona State University got an unexpected gift this past holiday season: Ira A. and Mary Lou Fulton put $100 million under the university’s Christmas tree.

The Fultons, already the university’s largest single donors, had been thinking about this gift for some time. This gift, one of the largest single donations in higher education history, puts their total gifts to ASU at more than $160 million. They have also given $72 million to Brigham Young University.

Fulton, a self-made millionaire, is concerned about the level of private investment in Arizona’s
universities. He said, “Private citizens in Arizona are giving less than half of what citizens in California, Texas, Colorado, Kansas and Oklahoma are giving to their universities. I’d like to see that change.”

The gift will be used for special educational initiatives, which the university will establish after
discussions with the Fultons. The gift will not be used for general budget relief or construction projects. According to reports from the Arizona Republic, if all goes as Fulton hopes, the College of Education will be renamed the Mary Lou Fulton School of Education, after his wife, who graduated from the college.

Describing the gift as “unprecedented and magnificent,” Arizona State University President Michael Crow praised the Fultons for their “incredible generosity, their unwavering commitment to ASU’s future, and their confidence in ASU’s emergence as a New American University.”

Previous gifts by the Fultons have named the Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering at ASU; created the Mary Lou Fulton Program at the ASU College of Education; and helped to launch ASU’s Decision Theater, the region’s only interactive, three-dimensional institute that allows civic leaders to engage in visualizing the effects of public choices on issues ranging from water and air quality to transportation and land-use.

Recently, ASU also launched the Fulton Challenge, matching donations by faculty, students, staff and alumni at ASU’s Colleges of Nursing, Design, Education, Law, Liberal Arts and Sciences, the Katherine Herberger College of Fine Arts, and Barrett Honors College through a challenge grant provided by the Fultons. More than $560,000 has been raised to date from 4,149 students, faculty, staff, alumni and friends, achieving 187 percent of the original goal of $300,000. The Fulton Challenge for Athletics at ASU has also raised more than $1 million, which has been matched by Ira and Mary Lou Fulton.

Ira Fulton grew up in Tempe and attended ASU, where he had a newspaper delivery route that included the then-president of ASU, Grady Gammage. Mary Lou Fulton is a graduate of ASU’s College of Education.

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Ira A. and Mary Lou Fulton

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