Summary: Arizona State University’s College of Law receives a $3 million gift.
Arizona State University is receiving its second largest gift in its College of Law’s history, upon a $3 million donation from the W. P. Carey Foundation. Chairman of the foundation, Francis J. Carey III, and trustee J. Samuel Armstrong IV, hope to honor their ancestor John Samuel Armstrong who founded what would become ASU. That is why $129 million of the gift will go to constructing the Arizona Center for Law and Society, a project that began in July and will be ready for classes August of 2016, and they will create this center around the Armstrong Great Hall.
This hall will be a teaching and learning space honoring not only Armstrong, but continuing the tradition the family has kept in supporting the school.
“I am grateful to the W. P. Carey Foundation for this wonderful gift, and I am honored that we can bring the Armstrong name to the Arizona Center for Law and Society,” said Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law Dean Douglas Sylvester. “The Armstrong Great Hall will serve as an important link between ASU law’s past and its future.”
The W.P. Carey Foundation is equally enthusiastic about the gift, with J. Samuel Armstrong IV saying, “We are proud to continue the Armstrong legacy for the benefit of future generations. This gift from the W. P. Carey Foundation to create the Armstrong Great Hall is a symbol of two names that form one family that cares deeply about ASU becoming one of the great learning institutions.”
The Hall will be the centerpiece, serving as the public entrance to the center. It will have the capacity to hold courtroom proceedings, such as oral arguments before the Arizona Supreme Court.
“This gift enables us to support the legacies of our ancestors, John S. Armstrong and William Polk Carey. Bill was grateful when ASU originally named the main law school building at ASU in honor of his grandfather, John S. Armstrong, in 1968 and went on to support ASU with the establishment of the W.P Carey School of Business in 2003. He believed in the importance of both legal and business education as a way to enhance our country’s future. The W. P. Carey Foundation strives to continue to support his priorities, and hopes that this new building strengthens the national statue of the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law and enhances the close working relationship between the law school and the W.P. Carey School of Business.”
These are bold moves, to say the least, when law schools are teetering, but donations are always welcome, and what ASU becomes subsequent of the building may be a rising symbol aligned, perhaps, with happier days in the legal sector, soon to come.