A Record-Setting Donation From a Black Alumna of the University of Southern California

The University of Southern California has received a $25 million gift from Verna Dauterive, a retired schoolteacher and principal. She is a graduate of Wiley College in Texas and holds a master’s degree and an educational doctorate from USC.

Her late husband, Peter, was a highly successful businessman who founded and served as president of the Founders Savings and Loan Association in Los Angeles. Peter Dauterive was a 1949 graduate of USC’s Marshall School of Business.

The university states that the $25 million gift is the largest donation ever made by an African American to a college or university in the United States. This is not the first gift made by the couple to the university. In 1985 the Dauterives endowed a scholarship fund for minority students pursuing educational doctorates at the university.

Copyright © 2008. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. All rights reserved.