USC’s Nine-Year Effort Raises Record $2.85 Billion

LOS ANGELES — USC said Wednesday it raised a record $2.85 billion during a recently concluded nine-year fund-raising campaign that saw the rise and demise of the high-tech boom. More than 350,000 individuals, corporations and foundations contributed to the private university during the campaign that began in July 1993.

USC officials said the amount of pledges and gifts topped the previous record of about $2.84 billion.

However, cross-town rival UCLA may take the crown when its decade-long effort ends in 2005. Already it has raised $2.19 billion.

The only other American university to surpass the $2 billion mark is Harvard, which raised $2.6 billion in a five-year campaign that ended in 1999.

Alan Kreditor, USC senior vice president for university advancement, directed the fund-raising effort.

He said the money flowed even after the dot-com economic boom of the mid-90s collapsed.

Most funds raised were so-called restricted gifts earmarked for specific uses. For instance, $112.5 million was given in 1998 to establish an institute for biomedical engineering.

Kreditor said medicine and engineering programs did very well, perhaps because donors have a sense that the research can translate to immediate benefits.

Only about $1 billion of the $2.85 billion came from USC alumni, Kreditor said, adding the rest came from “`footloose” donors without strong ties to the university.

He called that “a significant vote of confidence in the university.”

Bay Area’s Leading Art Schools Call Off Merger

SAN FRANCISCO — The Bay Area’s leading art schools have called off plans to merge.

The San Francisco Art Institute and the Oakland-based California College of Arts and Crafts had planned to form a new school that aimed to attract artists from around the world. But representatives from the schools said they concluded that merging the schools wouldn’t be good for the institutions.

“We felt there would be a diminution of value if they didn’t continue to operate separately,” said Charles Collins, chairman of the Art Institute board of trustees.

The new school would have had about 2,100 students, making it the third largest in the nation behind New York’s Pratt Institute and Parsons School of Design.

UC Davis Says Missing Monkey Likely Dead

SACRAMENTO — The monkey missing from a research lab at UC Davis is presumed dead and believed to be lost in the sewer, school officials concluded Wednesday after employees passed lie detector tests.
The little gray and tan rhesus macaque slipped from its cage Feb. 13 while handlers were washing cages at the California National Primate Research Center.

It disappeared behind a row of cages and was believed to have crawled into a drain pipe after workers reported a slurping sound.
Searchers used fiber optics to explore hundreds of yards of pipes, but found no sign of the runaway monkey.

Primate center officials then called in campus police to investigate the possibility that an employee snatched the 2-year-old disease-free female.

“I think the animal never left the premises of the primate center,” said Lisa Lapin, a university spokeswoman. “There was not an animal running around Davis.”

The monkey’s handlers voluntarily submitted to a lie-detector test that used a computer to analyze stress in their voices, Lapin said. They were found to be truthful and police ruled out the possibility of a crime.

“It’s very disappointing and for many of us heartbreaking ,” said Dallas Hyde” director of the primate center.

Despite numerous breakouts over the years, it’s the only monkey unaccounted for in the 40-year history of the primate center.

The incident has spurred a review of security procedures at the center, which provides research monkeys to seven UC campuses and other research institutions nationwide studying cancer, asthma and AIDS” among other diseases.

The primate center flushed the sewer system when the monkey went missing, but will redouble its efforts to locate its remains.

The university may never know what happened to the animal” however, because a grinder in the sewer may have chewed the monkey to pieces.