Yale Bulletin and Calendar

January 28, 2000

Volume 28, Number 18

John C. Malone

Gift from alumnus John Malone
to fund engineering building

A $24 million gift from business entrepreneur John Malone will allow Yale to proceed with a new building for its engineering programs, President Richard C. Levin announced Jan. 20.

The engineering building, and the Malone gift that supports it, is part of an unprecedented investment in science and technology of more than $500 million that Yale announced. (See related story.)

"We are grateful that John Malone has taken a leadership role in supporting a critically important priority for Yale's fourth century," Levin said. "His gift signals Yale's commitment to excellence in engineering."

Levin said the gift from Malone, the chair of Liberty Media Corporation and a 1963 graduate of Yale's engineering program, will allow the University to proceed directly with the design and construction of a new engineering building.

"In an era when technology is clearly leading the way for American productivity and competitiveness, I am delighted to help Yale re-establish its leadership in this vital area," Malone said.

Engineering research and teaching at Yale is now conducted in four buildings on the central campus and in the School of Medicine's complex of buildings. The new engineering building made possible by Malone's gift will be located at Prospect and Trumbull streets.

Last fall, Levin announced an expansion in Yale's biomedical engineering program that included a commitment to hire four new faculty members and to seek funding to construct a new engineering building to house biomedical engineering and other programs.

Yale has established interdisciplinary majors in environmental engineering and biomedical engineering, and it has created a five-year "Select Program" that offers a master's degree to engineering students who aspire to leadership positions in technology. The Select Program's industrial partners provide students with summer research internships.

"Yale's programs in engineering and applied science have experienced a renaissance under the leadership of Dean D. Allan Bromley, one of Yale's most distinguished scientists who served as science advisor to President Bush," Levin said. "Yale has become an important center for research in critical areas of technology, including combustion and microelectronics. Our new expansion in biomedical engineering will complement and strengthen our engineering efforts."

Bromley said, "With generous support from our alumni and a strong commitment from our Administration for additional faculty positions and a new building, we have passed a watershed in the rebuilding of the scope and excellence of Yale engineering."

John C. Malone was born in Milford, Connecticut, and attended Hopkins Grammar School in New Haven. After receiving his B.S. degree in electrical engineering at Yale, Malone received a master's degree in industrial management from New York University in 1965 and a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1967 in operations research.

Malone has chaired Liberty Media since 1990. He was president and chief executive officer of Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI) from 1973 to 1996, when he became chair and CEO. He served in those capacities until last year, when TCI merged with AT&T Corp., of which Malone is now a director.

Recognized for his pioneering role in communications media, Malone became the leading operator of cable television in the United States and has championed the development of innovations such as digital television. Under his management, TCI and Liberty Media extended their scope beyond technology to include stakes in program properties such as the Learning Channel, Discovery, American Movie Classics and Black Entertainment Television. Integrated services of this kind became the model for later mergers in the communications industries.

Malone has received numerous honors, including the National Cable Television Association's Vanguard Award. He is a four-time winner of Wall Street Transcript's Gold Award for the cable television industry's best chief executive officer, and he won a Bronze Award in the 1993 Financial World CEO of the Year competition. Malone was a 1999 Sheffield Fellow at Yale.

After spending most of his career in the West, he recently renewed his ties to the New Haven area. He returned to the Yale campus in 1993, accepting an invitation to appear at the School of Management as the Dean's Distinguished Lecturer and speaking on the topic "Tele-Communication: Frontiers of Technology and Policy." At a 1994 ceremony at the Hopkins School, he received the Distinguished Alumni Award.

Malone's gifts from 1994 to 1998 to the Hopkins School led to the construction of the Malone Science Center. Named for Malone's father, this facility, which includes 10 fully equipped classroom labs, was inaugurated in the fall of 1999.

Malone has increased his philanthropic activity in other areas as well. In 1998, he made a gift to the new Magness Institute at the Cable Center at the University of Denver, which was named for Robert Magness, founder of Tele-Communications, Inc., for whom Malone had worked. In addition, last year Malone announced his plan to establish the Malone Family Foundation, with assets eventually approaching $1.5 billion, to make charitable contributions to education.

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