IU Kelley Gets $16 Million Gift

Kelley will use part of the gift to fund new virtual classrooms and studios at its William Godfrey Graduate and Executive Education Center

WILL BUILT OUT VIDEO STUDIOS FOR ITS ONLINE COURSES & FURTHER INVEST IN A LIVING & LEARNING CENTER

On Kesner’s wish list was the built out of new studios to maintain the school’s position in the online education arena. Currently, Kelley has only one video studio for its online classes. With the gift, the school hopes to create two larger studios with multiple screens that will give teaching faculty greater visibility of online students during live class sessions. Kelley also expects to build two smaller studios where faculty can manage the technology without help from technicians and videographers along with another studio comparable to its existing one.

The proposed studios would be in the school’s Godfrey Graduate and Executive Education Center. “Included in this built out of the studios will also be some reserves to help us upgrade the equipment so we are at the state of the art. That’s another feature of what we will be able to do with this amazingly generous gift.”

Also on the dean’s wish list was a more meaningful investment in the school’s Living and Learning Center. “The Living and Learning Center is a great way for students to begin their undergraduate experience at Kelley,” adds Kesner. “They interact with executives who come to campus. They go on trips to engage with alumni. It ensures that people not only have a comfortable home when they join the Kelley School but it also contributes to their ability to succeed in the first year of the program. It feeds into our retention and graduation rates.

HOW THE GIFT WILL BE USED BY THE KELLEY SCHOOL

The gift will be parceled out among the two major initiatives and two other priorities:

• $10 million will go toward creating state-of-the-art studios and “virtual classrooms.” The Brian D. Jellison Studio Classroom will offer online students in the Kelley Direct MBA, MS degree and Kelley Executive Education programs the experience of being in a live classroom with their peers. The studios will benefit all programs as instructors create new course content and utilize advanced pedagogical techniques such as “flipped classroom learning,” making classroom time even more valuable and dynamic. The studios will continue Kelley’s reach to students across the country and around the globe. 
• $5.8 million will support the Brian D. Jellison Living Learning Center, a five-minute walk from the business school. This residential program currently helps 550 freshman business students each year to identify their strengths, interests, and talents through special programs, study groups, and travel opportunities. Funding for the Living Learning Center will provide increased support for staff as well as additional event opportunities and on-site programming for students on the Bloomington campus. 
• The gift also provides $100,000 for the creation of the Brian D. Jellison Financial Literacy course series. Intended for a broad audience, the courses will be offered at no cost through edX, the nonprofit online learning platform. Kelley currently partners with the global learning community on edX to deliver online master’s degrees in accounting and information technology management.
• Finally, in support of the school’s efforts to encourage global student experiences, the Jellison Family Foundation is donating $100,000 toward scholarships for study abroad. 

‘EDUCATION WAS FIRST AND FOREMOST TO BRIAN’

The Jellison gift is the fourth-largest ever received by the Kelley School, following a $33 million gift from the Lilly Endowment in 2012, a $25 million pledge from real estate investor William Godfrey in 2005, and the $23 million naming gift from Estel Wood Kelley, food industry executive and entrepreneur credited with introducing Americans to such brands as Tang, Grey Poupon, and Cool Whip. Both Godfrey and Kelley also were self-made men from humble beginnings.

For the Jellison Foundation, the $16 million gift to Kelley represents the first significant grant by the family. “We felt very strongly that the first major distribution out of the foundation should go to Indiana University, because without the education that Brian received there, who knows what he could have done,” says Sheila Jellison, his wife of 52 years, in a statement on the gift. “Education was first and foremost to Brian. Given an education in the field you want to pursue opens all kinds of doors. You give back when you can, and IU was our first choice.” 

“It’s extremely meaningful for our family that IU will always be a place where our father will be remembered,” added their daughter, Christie Jellison Mucha. “We’ve seen first-hand the impact that education can have on people’s lives, and we hope our gift does the same for future generations of Kelley students, just as it did for my dad.”

Simonds, calls IU’s Kelley “one of our favorite midwestern secrets,” agrees. She hopes the gift helps to inspire current and future students. “We wanted our gift and our father’s legacy of coming from small-town rural America to CEO of a $30 billion company to let students know that could be anyone’s path.”

DON’T MISS: 2019 DEAN OF THE YEAR: IDIE KESNER or INSIDE KELLEY’S ONLINE MBA