$25 million new gift from John and Tashia Morgridge gives impetus to long-delayed dream of a next-generation engineering complex at university
UW–Madison’s long-delayed dream of a next-generation engineering complex took a decisive step forward, powered by a $25 million gift from two of the university’s most influential modern benefactors, John and Tashia Morgridge.
Their latest commitment to the Phillip A. Levy Engineering Center is as much a statement about Wisconsin’s economic future as it is about their own belief that institutions can be remade through philanthropy.
The $25 million donation from the Morgridges pushes the fundraising effort for the new Phillip A. Levy Engineering Center closer to its $150 million private philanthropy goal, a key component of a broader funding package that also includes more than $43 million from UW–Madison and $226 million from the state of Wisconsin.
Construction on the 395,000‑square‑foot, seven‑story building was approved in 2024, following years of political wrangling in Madison over capacity constraints in the College of Engineering and the state’s broader workforce needs.
When it opens—currently projected for 2028—the Levy Engineering Center will anchor the engineering campus and allow UW–Madison to enroll roughly 1,000 additional undergraduate engineering students, addressing a long‑standing bottleneck that has resulted in qualified applicants being turned away for lack of space.
The building is designed to split its footprint roughly evenly between research and teaching, offering active‑learning classrooms, collaborative project spaces, and advanced research laboratories designed to bring students, faculty, and industry partners into closer daily contact.
Grainger Dean of the College of Engineering Devesh Ranjan has cast the project in sweeping terms, describing the Levy Center as “a catalyst for ideas capable of reshaping society” and a hub where ambitious engineering talent can address everything from infrastructure and manufacturing to climate and health.
The Morgridges’ gift, he noted, is pivotal not only in closing the funding gap but in signaling to other donors and policymakers that the project is a priority for Wisconsin’s economic competitiveness.
In recognition of the gift, John and Tashia Morgridge will name a major research laboratory on the building’s third floor and intend to name one of the building’s floors in honor of Ian Robertson, the College of Engineering dean emeritus who led the years‑long campaign to get the facility approved before stepping down in June 2025. That choice reflects the couple’s pattern of using naming opportunities to highlight institutional leaders and academic priorities rather than themselves alone.
Their $25 million joins a philanthropic capital stack that already includes a $75 million lead gift from brothers and UW alumni Marvin and Jeffrey Levy—after whom the center is named in memory of their older brother, Phillip—as well as a separate $25 million gift from mechanical engineering alumnus and investment executive Bjorn Borgen, whose name will adorn the building’s active‑learning wing. The Levy Center has quickly become a case study in cumulative major giving: no single donor is underwriting the full project, but a small cadre of high‑capacity alumni is shaping its design, programming, and long‑term ambitions.
To understand why the Morgridges’ $25 million matters, it helps to see it in the context of a philanthropic arc spanning almost six decades at UW–Madison. Both graduated from the university in 1955—John with a degree that launched him into the technology industry, Tashia into a career in education.
John would go on to become president, chief executive officer, and later chairman of the board at Cisco Systems Inc., guiding the company through a formative period as networking technologies redefined global business.
Tashia devoted her professional life to special education and literacy intervention, experiences that later shaped the couple’s giving priorities around access, teaching, and student support.
They often tell the story of their first gift to their alma mater: a $5 check written in 1967, more a gesture of loyalty than a transformative act. Over time, that symbolic beginning evolved into one of the most consequential philanthropic relationships in the university’s history.
The couple has repeatedly used UW–Madison as a platform for what could be called “systems‑level” philanthropy—funding not just buildings, but centers, institutes, and endowments designed to change how a public research university operates over the long term.
“From business to education, we’ve seen how collaboration sparks progress,” they said in a joint statement announcing the Levy Center gift. “We were inspired by the vision for a place where people and ideas intersect—where students, faculty, and industry partners learn from one another and turn shared discovery into real impact.”
That language is consistent with the couple’s long‑standing focus on cross‑sector collaboration and on using universities as convening spaces for public‑minded innovation.
The $25 million for the engineering center is only the latest in a long string of major commitments that have effectively redrawn the campus map and altered the university’s financial model. Their philanthropy at UW–Madison spans:
The Morgridge Center for Public Service (founded 1996), which has become a central hub for civic engagement, connecting students with community organizations across Wisconsin.
The Morgridge Institute for Research (launched 2004), an independent biomedical research institute affiliated with UW–Madison that emphasizes interdisciplinary work in areas such as regenerative biology, virology, and medical imaging.
The Fund for Wisconsin Scholars (endowed in 2007), which provides need‑based grants to lower‑income Wisconsin students, reflects the couple’s concern with college affordability and social mobility.
A $100 million gift in 2014—then the largest single contribution in the university’s history—was to invest in faculty through endowed chairs and professorships.
A lead commitment of $125 million for the School of Computer, Data & Information Sciences, which opened Morgridge Hall as the physical home for one of the university’s most strategically important academic units in 2021.
Collectively, these gifts have influenced everything from how UW–Madison recruits and retains faculty, to how it supports underrepresented students, to how it positions itself in fast‑growing fields such as data science and biomedical research.
The Levy Engineering Center may be the latest marquee project, but for campus insiders, it is also another node in a Morgridge‑inspired network of facilities and programs designed to keep a public flagship competitive in a global higher education market.
Their giving has also helped normalize eight‑ and nine‑figure philanthropy at a Midwestern public institution where, historically, state appropriations and modest private gifts carried the load.
The 2014 faculty investment and the 2021 Morgridge Hall commitment, in particular, signaled to other high‑net‑worth alumni that UW–Madison could absorb, and productively deploy, gifts on a scale once associated primarily with coastal private universities.
Politically, the Levy Engineering Center occupies unusual terrain: the project only moved forward after a prolonged standoff in the state legislature, with UW–Madison officials and business groups arguing that Wisconsin was under‑producing engineering graduates relative to demand in manufacturing, energy, technology, and infrastructure.
The 2024 approval unlocked hundreds of millions in public money, but with a clear expectation that private philanthropy would close a significant share of the gap.
By adding their $25 million at this moment, the Morgridges are doing more than naming a lab; they are effectively helping to secure a long‑term expansion of the state’s engineering talent pipeline.
The new building will allow UW–Madison to grow enrollment, expand hands‑on learning, and host more industry‑aligned research, changes that local business leaders say are essential if Wisconsin is to compete for advanced manufacturing and technology investment in the upper Midwest.
Their gift also complements the donation from Denver‑based investor and alumnus Bjorn Borgen, whose $25 million commitment includes a $5 million endowment for experiential learning in mechanical engineering and a $20 million gift to name the active‑learning wing the Bjorn Borgen Learning Commons. Borgen’s funds support 3D‑printing labs, design competitions, and student teams in national robotics, aerospace, and autonomous‑vehicle contests—programming that will be housed in the new facility.
Taken together, the Levy brothers’ $75 million lead gift, Borgen’s $25 million, and the Morgridges’ latest $25 million illustrate a coordinated bet by alumni who see engineering not just as an academic discipline but as the backbone of the region’s innovation economy. The state’s substantial appropriation, meanwhile, reflects bipartisan recognition that engineering capacity has become a proxy for a state’s long‑term competitiveness.
For John and Tashia Morgridge, the Levy Engineering Center gift continues a pattern: identify institutional choke points—student access, faculty support, research infrastructure, or capacity in high‑demand fields—and deploy capital to unlock long‑term change. In this case, the choke point is physical space; without a major new facility, UW–Madison’s engineering college could not grow, no matter how strong the demand from students or employers.
The couple has made clear that what draws them to the engineering project is the opportunity for collaboration at scale. They have repeatedly emphasized environments where students, faculty, and external partners work side by side, whether in public‑service projects, data‑science labs, or, now, engineering design studios and research labs. In that sense, the $25 million is less about bricks and mortar than about creating a physical and cultural ecosystem where ideas can move quickly from concept to application.
With the Levy Engineering Center now moving toward completion and Morgridge‑backed facilities visible across campus, the couple’s influence on UW–Madison is approaching a kind of permanence: they have not just supported individual programs but helped define what a 21st‑century Midwestern public research university can look like.
For Wisconsin, and for generations of future engineers, the impact of this latest gift will be measured not just in square footage, but in the careers and companies that trace their origins back to a lab or classroom inside a building the Morgridges helped make possible.