$10 million gift to fund technology project to improve teaching

Black Issues in Higher Education, March 25, 2004 by Ronald Roach

SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO, CALIF.

Dr. Henry T. Nicholas III, co-founder and former CEO of the Broadcom Corporation, has announced a gift from the Nicholas Foundation of $10 million to St. Margaret's Episcopal School in San Juan Capistrano and the formation of a collaboration with the University of California, Irvine (UCI) to develop new technologies that will improve pre-K-12 education.

The $10 million unrestricted gift to St. Margaret's is the largest since the school was founded in 1979, and will be the first step in the school's "Legacy Campaign" to raise more than $45 million for infrastructure improvements and establish a multimillion-dollar endowment.

"The new initiative will 'change the paradigm' by which technology is developed in the university and applied to a real-world educational environment," Nicholas says.

St. Margaret's will work with UCI's Center for Pervasive Communications and Computing (CPCC) and with the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology Cal-[(IT).sup.2], the university's high-profile joint technology venture with UC San Diego. Researchers at the CPCC and Cal-[(IT).sup.2] will develop new technologies to be applied to improving Pre-K-12 education. St. Margaret's will become a "test-bed" for implementing these technologies in a real-world environment, according to officials.

"Our objective is to distinguish St. Margaret's as one of the pre-eminent independent schools in the nation and establish a model for collaboration with leading-edge technology research institutions," says St. Margaret headmaster Marcus Hurlbut.