The namesakes of UCLA’s engineering school are kick-starting efforts to expand the program with a $100 million donation, the largest in the school’s history, university officials announced Tuesday.
The gift from Broadcom cofounder Henry Samueli and his wife Susan increases their overall donations to UCLA to $188 million, and pushes their support of the University of California system to $478 million.
The program has been named the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering since 2000, when they donated $30 million for capital improvements and fellowships for grad students and new faculty. They later donated $10 million to the school to support endowed professorships and $20 million for undergraduate scholarships and internships.
The latest gift — the largest in the history of the UCLA School of Engineering — is aimed at spurring an expansion of the program to 7,000 students by 2028, up from 5,300 in 2016. The school also plans to add roughly 100 professors, bringing the total to about 250.
“The demand for engineering graduates has continued to grow unabated, so it is exciting to see UCLA’s significant commitment to increase the number of students and faculty, and expand research and entrepreneurship within the school,” Henry Samueli said in a statement released by the university. “Such a commitment will ensure that UCLA Samueli remains among the elite engineering schools in the world, with an ever-growing impact on our society’s greatest challenges.”
Samueli earned a bachelor’s degree from UCLA in 1975, a master’s degree the following year and a doctorate in 1980. He is Broadcom’s board chairman, and was a UCLA professor of engineering at UCLA from 1985-95.
UCLA Chancellor Gene Block said the couple’s “extraordinary commitment to public higher education will benefit UCLA and our larger community for generations to come. Their generous continued support reflects their confidence in our university to serve the greater good.”