Bill Mayer: Greening Up the Campus

ill Mayer, chair of the University of Maryland College Park Foundation Board of Directors, knows the university campus well, having spent several years here earning his undergraduate degree and a master's of business administration, and later serving as dean of the business school for five years. When he and his wife Kathy were looking for a new way to enhance the university, it made sense to start from the ground.

A portion of their $5 million gift will be realized in the form of green spaces and walkways that will stretch from Mowatt Road past Van Munching Hall all the way past the School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. The greenway, as the Mayers are calling it, was an opportunity to respond to a need.

"We want to make it another part of the centerpiece that is the whole campus," he says.

The balance of their gift will support a variety of programs at the university. "The university was very good to me when I showed up stone broke, and I never forgot that."