• Introduction
• Executive MBA Program
• Full-time MBA Program
• Master's and MBA
  Programs
• Executive Development
  Programs
• Undergraduate Program
• Doctoral Programs
• Faculty News and
  College Highlights
• Giving
• Broad School Profile

Introduction

Venture philanthropist Eli Broad committed to business education at MSU

The son of Lithuanian immigrants who settled in Detroit, Eli Broad now lives in Los Angeles and is a major presence in the global financial market. He is chairman of AIG SunAmerica Inc., a leading financial services company specializing in retirement savings and investment products and services. Broad also serves on the board of SunAmerica’s parent company, American International Group, Inc. (AIG), world leaders in insurance and financial services, operating in 130 countries worldwide.

Broad graduated with honors from Michigan State University (MSU) in 1954 with a degree in accounting. He went on to found not one, but two multi-billion dollar S&P 500 companies (SunAmerica, and home building giant, KB Homes, formerly Kaufman and Broad Home Corporation).88 In 1968, his achievements brought him recognition as an Outstanding Alumni Award recipient by the MSU College of Business. In 2002, MSU honored Broad with a Distinguished Alumni Award, and an honorary doctor of humanities degree.

Broad School Gifts

On June 25, 1991, Eli Broad made what was at the time the largest gift ever donated to a public business school. His $20 million gift to endow the Eli Broad College of Business and the Eli Broad Graduate School of Management, both renamed in his honor, was designed to help Michigan State University’s MBA program emerge as one of the nation’s top graduate management programs. The original endowment funds MBA program operations, four endowed professorships and the Broad Scholars program. An additional contribution of nearly $2 million in 1998 was used to expand the MBA program’s emphasis on information technology, fund an endowed professorship and remodel two classrooms to serve as dedicated information systems labs.

Broad said the Midwest land grant university was the ideal candidate to help America regain its industrial competitiveness through offering an enlightened curriculum and making quality education accessible to exceptional future business leaders from diverse cultural and economic backgrounds.

By focusing Michigan State University’s MBA program on new management realities, and not simply on theory, by addressing real life problems of industry, and by attracting prestigious faculty and top students throughout the world, we will become more international in our thoughts and insights, and more competitive worldwide,” predicted Broad.

During the recent search for a new dean of the business college, Eli Broad himself took an active role in the process. He facilitated the search with a commitment to endow the dean’s position in perpetuity with a $5 million gift. Those resources, available to the dean, can be used to support faculty, facility or academic program initiatives as determined by the dean’s office.

Broad also was among the building fund donors for the James B. Henry Center for Executive Development that opened in the Fall of 2001.

Recently Broad made an additional gift commitment of $3,475,000 to support student scholarships in the MBA program, which brings his giving commitment for The Campaign for MSU to $16.6 million. The Campaign for MSU was announced last fall, and will continue through 2007, in an effort to raise $1.2 billion for the university.

Arts, Education and Research

Avid supporters of the arts and tireless advocates for education, Broad and his wife, Edythe, have committed time and resources to a variety of community initiatives, arts organizations and educational institutions. They established The Broad Art Foundation in 1984, with an active “lending library” of its extensive collection to museums and galleries worldwide.

In 1999, the Broads founded The Broad Foundation, whose mission is to dramatically improve K-12 student achievement by investing in new ideas and innovative leadership in governance, management and labor relations in the nation’s largest urban school systems. In its first three years, the Foundation made more than 40 major grants; convened two retreats, which were attended by nationally recognized university presidents, school district superintendents, school board members and labor leaders; and launched three flagship initiatives - The Broad Prize for Urban Education, The Broad Center for Superintendents, and The Broad Institute for School Boards. Broad has said, “I can imagine no more important contribution to our country’s future than a long term commitment to improving urban K-12 public schools.”

Earlier this year, the Broads provided the founding gift for the Eli and Edythe L. Broad Institute, a new type of biomedical research institute aimed at realizing the promise of the human genome to revolutionize clinical medicine and to make knowledge widely available to scientists around the world. The Broad Institute, which will begin operation later this year, represents a unique research collaboration among MIT, Harvard and its affiliated hospitals, and the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research.