UF graduate business studies building project attracts $9.7 million in private gifts
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Fundraising for the future home of the Hough Graduate School of Business in the University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business Administration has been very strong since the project was announced in January 2007. Recent private gifts have brought the total raised to $9.7 million for construction.
Gifts of $1 million each from John and Mary Lou Dasburg of Miami, Fla., Tom and Kathy Shannon of Tampa, Fla., and Jean Wittner of St. Petersburg, Fla., coupled with $5 million from William R. and Hazel Hough of St. Petersburg, and other private donations, are ensuring that the three-level, 57,000 square-foot building could be under construction on the northeast corner of the UF campus as early as August.
The building, to be named William R. Hough Hall, will feature four 75-seat classrooms, two 40-person flexible seminar rooms, approximately 20 breakout rooms for small group work and interviews and a glass-walled “trading room” that will function as a mock brokerage house. Advising/career services offices, conference rooms, an open-air atrium and two student lounges will also be contained in the structure, which will be constructed to be LEED-certified and considered a “green” building.
In recognition of the Shannons’ gift, the third floor of the building will be named The Tom and Kathy Shannon Family Leadership Gallery.
“It means a lot to our family to maintain a closeness with the growth of the university; our tradition is to be involved,” said Tom Shannon, a multi-business owner and president of T-Bird Restaurant Group, operators of more than 60 Outback Steakhouse franchises in California.
Tom Shannon, a former Florida Gator football player, and his wife earned degrees from UF. So did two of the Shannon’s three children, their son-in-law, Tom Shannon’s sister and two of her children.
In honor of the Dasburg’s gift, UF will name the second floor The John H. and Mary Lou Dasburg Mezzanine.
John Dasburg earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering, a master’s degree in business and a law degree, all from UF. Mary Lou Dasburg also graduated with a law degree from UF.
“Supporting the University of Florida is one of our passions,” said John Dasburg. “There has been a direct link from our education to our ability to improve our lives and hopefully the lives of others.”
John Dasburg is currently chief executive officer of ASTAR Air Cargo, based in Miami. He is former CEO of Burger King and Northwest Airlines and president of Marriott Corporation Lodging Group.
The Dasburgs have also supported UF’s Levin College of Law in the past by establishing a professorship in honor of Michael Gordon, a law professor who both of the Dasburgs had as an instructor.
Jean Wittner’s gift toward the construction of the building is in honor of her late husband, Ted Wittner, a 1950 graduate of UF’s Warrington College of Business Administration.
Wittner is president of the Wittner Companies, a holding company that provides life insurance products, employee benefit insurance programs and commercial office leasing and property management services. She has been in the banking and financial services industry in the St. Petersburg for many years and held several community business leadership positions, including having served as the first woman elected as president of the St. Petersburg Area Chamber of Commerce.
The first floor of the new graduate business building will be named The Ted P. Wittner Teaching Concourse.
“Ted said that UF changed his life,” Wittner said. “It was natural for me to decide on an appropriate gift to honor his passion for the university.”