'Supporting a vision': Queen's University receives record $100-million donation

Author of the article:

Elliot Ferguson, Kingston Whig Standard

Published Nov 05, 2023 • Last updated 5 hours ago • 3 minute read

Stephen R. J. Smith, shakes hands with Queen’s University engineering students following a ceremony marking Smith’s $100-million donation to the university’s engineering faculty in Kingston, Ont. on Thursday, Nov. 2, 2023. Elliot Ferguson/The Whig-Standard/Postmedia Network Photo by Elliot Ferguson /WHIG-STANDARD / POSTMEDIA NETWORK

The latest donation to Queen’s University’s promises to transform the way the university teaches its engineering students.

Eight years after making a historic donation to Queen’s University, Stephen J.R. Smith took philanthropy to another level Thursday morning.

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The Queen’s engineering alumnus and leading financial services entrepreneur and philanthropist donated $100 million to the university’s faculty of engineering and applied science.

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It is hoped the donation will help transform STEM — science, technology, engineering and math — education and address the world’s most pressing problems and make an impact on global and local levels, Smith said prior to the announcement.

“I think in many ways, the education I got here as a student and the opportunities that it afforded me made me what I am today,” Smith said. “I’m a big believer in STEM education, and education in general is having transformational effects in society.

“Education, I think, is under a lot of pressure. In real terms, education has been defunded over the last 20 or 30 years,” he said. “I think it’s important we invest in the future through education, we solve, we try to address some of the world’s problems through education and STEM education in particular.”

Just as his $50-million donation in 2015 was the largest donation to any Canadian school of business, Smith’s donation Thursday was the largest gift ever to a Canadian engineering program and among the largest to any university in the country.

Following Smith’s earlier donation, the university renamed its business school the Smith School of Business and, as it did in 2015, the university is to rename the engineering and applied science faculty the Stephen J.R. Smith Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science at Queen’s University.

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“The impact of this gift is truly transformative in so many different ways,” Kevin Deluzio, dean of the faculty of engineering and applied science, said.

“What we’re aiming to do here is to change the way we educate, to prepare our students to have more of an impact in the world they live in, and it’s hard to limit the impact because our students will be in all segments of society,” Deluzio said. “What we’re really trying to do with this is to prepare them to solve the complex challenges that you hear about — the sustainable energy, climate change resilience, access to food and water. We know that to do that, we’ve got to educate differently.”

The size of the donation will allow changes to the faculty at a scale that would not otherwise be possible, Deluzio said.

“It’s a donation in support of a new vision for engineering education, and it’s in that area that you’ll feel the greatest impact,” Patrick Deane, the principal and vice-chancellor of Queen’s University, said.

“It will have huge ramifications for the university at large, of course, as a gift of this size will inevitably have, but it is about supporting a vision for education,” he said. “It tries to understand the social context within which engineers do their work. Their work is highly technical, but it is also about society and the needs of society.”

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Aidan Shimuzu, an applied mathematics and engineering student and the president of the Engineering Society of Queen’s University, said students are excited by what the donation could mean to the classroom.

“I think our students are going to be really excited about this change,” Shimuzu said. “I think they’ll understand the impact that it’s going to have, and the real impact is going to be in the classroom. That’s where the magic really happens.”

Stephen J.R. Smith, donning a scarf with the faculty of engineering colours, talks with Queen’s University faculty of engineering students after Smith announces a historic $100-million gift to Queen’s University on Thursday, Nov. 2, 2023.