William & Mary has received the biggest donation in its 331-year-old history in order to tackle what university leaders call the “existential threats” posed by climate change in coastal communities like Hampton Roads.
Local philanthropist Jane Batten gave $100 million to revamp and expand an existing coastal and marine sciences school, which will now bear her name.
Katherine Rowe, president of William & Mary, said the goal is to invest big in addressing topics like pollution, flooding and loss of agricultural land.
“In Virginia, five million people live on coastlines, and a much larger number are affected by the health of the Chesapeake Bay watershed,” she said. “So the stakes couldn’t be higher for ensuring the health of all aspects of life in coastal communities.”
She said about half of the money will go toward new programming, including hiring a lot more faculty.
“What this gift does is allow us very rapidly to expand the degree programs in a way that would just have gone much more slowly without teaching and research faculty to support a much larger group of students,” she told WHRO.
The rest will go toward “transforming” the existing campus, which is interspersed with William & Mary’s Virginia Institute of Marine Science at Gloucester Point.
“It's going to be a mix of renovation, innovation and new spaces to get us what we need to be to make us really a premier destination for other scientists and learners in the public to come together,” said Derek Aday, director of VIMS who will also be dean of the new school.
The expected rise in students is tied to a key piece of the expansion: a new undergraduate degree in marine science. The university hopes to launch the program next fall but still needs state approval to do so.
Over the past five years, Aday said they’ve seen interest in marine science courses continue to climb, on par with common majors like geology and sociology.
The expansion could be a “fundamental sort of reimagining of what’s possible here,” he said, bringing together VIMS’ research activities with more traditional classwork.
A note of transparency: Jane Batten is a financial supporter of WHRO Public Media. WHRO’s newsroom is editorially independent.
