$15 million donation will fix up classrooms and labs on UMKC’s campuses
University of Missouri-Kansas City is poised for an upgrade worth millions, thanks to a hefty gift from The Sunderland Foundation.
The 74-year-old foundation, which focuses on supporting construction projects in the Kansas City region and areas west, has committed $15 million to renovate some key campus buildings, including the Henry W. Bloch School of Management, Miller Nichols Library, the schools of law, dentistry and engineering and computing.
UMKC’s Volker campus, near the Country Club Plaza, and the health sciences buildings on Hospital Hill are in line for improvements to classrooms, laboratories and research space.
Some of the work, which will extend throughout the coming school year, is already underway.
“The Sunderland Foundation has been a supporter and advocate for UMKC for more than three decades,” Chancellor C. Mauli Agrawal said in a statement Thursday. “We are honored and excited that they continue to invest in our growth.”
Here’s how the money will be used:
▪ The Bloch school will get $5 million for renovations at its Heritage Hall, which is the original home of the business school and has not been upgraded since 1986.
▪ Miller Nichols Library will get $3 million for renovations to its third floor in preparation for the relocation of the State Historical Society of Missouri, currently housed in Newcomb Hall, the onetime home for the university’s library.
▪ The 125-year-old law school will get $3 million toward classroom renovations. Some classrooms there need improvements to support technology.
▪ At the School of Dentistry, $2 million will be spent to renovate the pre-clinic laboratory.
▪ At the School of Computing and Engineering, $2 million will go toward classroom renovations and to finish UMKC’s new $20 million Robert W. Plaster Free Enterprise and Research Center. Last year the Sunderland Foundation gave the lead gift on the center, set for completion in 2020.
Lester T. Sunderland, who was president of the Ash Grove Cement Co. for 33 years, created The Sunderland Foundation. His grandson, Kent Sunderland, is now president of the foundation’s board of trustees. He is also president of the UMKC Foundation and a UMKC trustee.
The foundation has recently given large grants for construction projects at Truman Medical Center, the University of Kansas Hospital and Children’s Mercy Hospital.
