UM Community Encouraged to Attend Friday Event Honoring Ford Foundation

Board members have strongly supported campus facilities and programs

Gertrude C. Ford Foundation board members John Lewis (left), Cheryle Sims and Anthony Papa meet with UM Acting Chancellor Morris Stocks to discuss plans for the university's new science building.

Gertrude C. Ford Foundation board members John Lewis (left), Cheryle Sims and Anthony Papa meet with UM Acting Chancellor Morris Stocks to discuss plans for the university’s new science building. Photo by Jay Ferchaud/UMMC

OXFORD, Miss. – The University of Mississippi will honor Gertrude C. Ford Foundation board members during a Friday (Sept. 4) announcement at 1:30 p.m. on the front steps of the Lyceum. Members of the campus community are encouraged to attend the ceremony, when Acting Chancellor Morris Stocks will announce expanded funding from the Ford Foundation.

Ford Foundation board members Anthony T. Papa, Cheryle M. Sims and John C. Lewis, all of Jackson, will be in attendance.

UM’s reputation for strong teaching and research in the sciences led the Ford Foundation to commit $20 million in October 2014 to a new science building, a significant addition to the Science District, which occupies the section of campus between University Avenue and All American Drive. Construction is expected to begin next year on the 200,000-square-foot building.

Classroom space and technological advances offered by this facility will be absolutely critical to serve the growing Ole Miss student body, university leaders say.

The projected cost for the science building is around $135 million, and UM will seek other private, federal and state funding, utilize internally generated funds and borrow funds to cover the remaining costs. University leaders hope to see the building completed by fall 2018.

Founded by the late Gertrude Castellow Ford, who came from a family of dedicated philanthropists, the Ford Foundation has already contributed $25 million for the 88,000-square-foot Gertrude C. Ford Center for the Performing Arts opened in 2002 and for several other initiatives, including the Gertrude C. Ford Ballroom in The Inn at Ole Miss and land for the Gertrude C. Ford Boulevard on the Oxford campus, as well as the Suzan Thames Chair of Pediatrics at the UM Medical Center.

Ford established the foundation in Jackson with a very generous gift in 1991 before her death in 1996. She and her husband, Aaron Lane Ford, who was an Ackerman attorney and U.S. congressman representing what was then Mississippi’s 4th District, are buried in Cuthbert, Georgia.