Taco White Family Foundation to donate $400K to back URI project

NORTH KINGSTOWN – The University of Rhode Island and the URI Foundation are expected to announce Monday at the kick-off to support the College of Engineering bond that the Taco White Family Foundation will donate $400,000 to support the school.
Of the gift total, $300,000 will support proposed new engineering facilities on the Kingston campus, which hinges on the passage of the $125 million higher education facilities bond referendum appearing on the Nov. 4 ballot.
The gift would establish the Taco/White Family Research and Innovation Laboratory, which will enhance innovation through research practices and engagement opportunities with industry.
The named learning space would be interactive and serve to help attract students and faculty, and to keep them at URI. The space will be housed in the proposed 195,000-square-foot building, which is designed to replace five existing engineering buildings on URI’s Kingston campus – Crawford Hall, Gilbreth Hall, Kelly Hall, Kelly Hall Annex and Wales Hall – all of which opened in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
The remaining $100,000 of the gift commitment will fund an endowed scholarship, the John Hazen White Scholarship, to support third- and fourth-year undergraduate students studying any discipline of engineering at URI.
“We are grateful to John [Hazen White Jr.] for his support and to the Taco/White Family Foundation for its pledge to this critical project,” URI President David M. Dooley said in a statement. “The university, its students, its faculty and the state will benefit from this generous gift as we move forward to expand our engagement with local industry. The new, cutting-edge facilities this gift supports will enable the college to build on its already impressive track record of educating world-class engineers now and into the future.”
White, president and CEO of Taco Inc., said, “As an employer and contributor to the economic vitality of this state, I am fully supportive of the bond issue that will be before the voters on Nov. 4, and I urge them to vote Yes on 4. Taco and companies like it rely on both the well-trained, highly educated workforce coming out of URI, and the research and innovation taking place in university labs. I am confident, as an employer of URI engineering students, that the passage of Question 4 and the resulting construction of the new engineering facilities at URI will contribute significantly to the growth of our state.
“It is critical, in this global economy, that we provide both students and faculty with the opportunity to be more innovative in their research practices and more interactive in their engagement with industry. The goal of this new laboratory is to ensure that URI is viewed as a real competitor when it comes to attracting the best and the brightest to learn and teach here. We, as a state, benefit from this level of excellence.”
URI was expected to kick off its campaign at Toray Plastics (America) Inc. in North Kingstown at 10 a.m. to raise support for the bond issue. Toray has pledged $2 million toward the engineering project.

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