$10 million gift from Joe and Julie Serra, the largest outright gift in Albion College history, lifts the couple’s public giving past $30 million
Joe Serra arrived at Albion College more than four decades ago to play basketball for a coach who would become a legend.
He left with a championship, a degree in economics and management, and a sense of what a small college can do for a young man still figuring out who he is. Julie, then his girlfriend and a student at Michigan State, visited campus so often that Albion has said she feels as if she graduated from there too.
Now the couple has given the college the largest outright gift in its history: a $10 million commitment that comes with no conditions attached.
The gift is unrestricted, which means Albion’s leaders can put the money wherever they believe it will matter most for students, whether that is scholarships, new hands-on learning opportunities, or a redesigned core curriculum.
That kind of flexibility is rare at this scale, and the Serras chose it deliberately. They have also agreed to co-chair Albion’s comprehensive campaign, which is now in its quiet leadership phase, putting their names and their time behind the gift as well as their money.
“Albion changed Joe’s life, and we want to make sure it can keep doing that for the next generations,” the Serras said.
“The College has strong leadership, a clear direction, and a mission that matters more than ever for students in Michigan and beyond. We don’t want to tie their hands; we want to strengthen them. This gift is our way of saying we’re all in.”
President Wayne Webster called it the couple’s boldest statement yet. “Joe and Julie Serra have never stopped investing in Albion students,” he said. “Because it is unrestricted, it lets us put resources exactly where they will make the greatest difference. A gift of this size from someone who knows Albion well and brings a comprehensive perspective as a respected business leader and former trustee says a great deal about where this College is headed.”
That perspective is earned. Joe came to Albion to play for Mike Turner, a 1969 Albion graduate, and co-captained the Britons’ 1981 Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association championship team before graduating in 1982.
He went on to serve on Albion’s Board of Trustees, and the college honored him with its Distinguished Alumni Award in 2013.
The fortune behind the gift was built one car at a time in Genesee County. Joe’s father, Albert, opened a single Chevrolet dealership in Grand Blanc in 1973. Joe joined him straight out of Albion and helped turn Al Serra Chevrolet into one of the highest-volume Chevrolet stores in the country.
After a stint running Saturn Retail Enterprises in Charlotte, North Carolina, he came home and bought the business from his father and other shareholders.
Under his leadership, Fenton-based Serra Automotive has grown into one of the nation’s 10 largest privately held automotive retail groups, with more than 3,000 employees.
Today Joe serves as chairman, and his son, Matt, leads day-to-day operations as president, the third generation of the family to run the company.
Julie, a Michigan State graduate, spent her career teaching kindergarten and has remained a familiar presence in the Genesee County community in retirement.
Together, the couple formalized their philanthropy in 1997 with the Serra Foundation, which Julie leads as president. For years its grants have flowed quietly to the institutions that shape everyday life around Flint and beyond: schools, youth programs, arts organizations, local hospitals, and universities.
Joe has often credited his mother, Lois, with teaching him to help others without needing credit for it, and the couple has generally preferred to give that way.
Over the past seven years, though, their gifts have grown larger and more visible, and nowhere more so than at Albion. In 2019 the Serras committed $5 million to create the Serra Fitness Center, a 10,000-square-foot expansion of what is now the Dow Serra Center. Their goal was a space for every student, not just athletes.
Julie described it as a place where any student could feel that “there is another part of this college that’s welcoming to me.” Joe put it more simply: “We benefited from Albion; let others benefit.”
In 2024 they returned with $1 million to lead the renovation of Kresge Gymnasium, the building where Joe once played and Michigan’s oldest active intercollegiate athletic facility.
The gift brought new basketball locker rooms, an improved lobby and lounge, new bleachers and signage, and support for a new athletic training room in the Dow Serra Center.
The Serras cut the ribbon on that training room alongside Tim Wyman, a 1991 graduate, and President Webster as student-athletes looked on, and a year later they stood in Kresge’s renovated lobby with Webster, Athletic Director Jennifer Rushton, and fellow donors to celebrate the finished work.
Their generosity has turned deeply personal elsewhere, too. Joe has survived a heart attack, multiple stents, and quintuple bypass surgery, which he attributes to genetics despite a healthy lifestyle.
He chose to have his open-heart surgery close to home at McLaren Flint rather than at a big-city medical center, and he has said he and Julie walked into the first meeting with his surgeon full of worry and walked out at ease.
Last fall the couple gave McLaren Flint $6 million, the hospital’s largest gift in more than 50 years, to launch an ECMO life-support program for patients in severe heart or lung failure, renovate the cardiac catheterization lab, expand cardiac rehabilitation, and open a clinic for high cholesterol and triglycerides.
Joe has said the couple went public only because the hospital hoped the news would draw attention to what he called “this jewel in our backyard.”
Just two weeks before the Albion announcement, the Serras made a $10 million commitment to Julie’s alma mater, Michigan State University, to support Spartan football and improvements at Spartan Stadium through the university’s FOR SPARTA athletics initiative.
It is the largest gift in a relationship with MSU that began in 1989. With the new Albion commitment, the Serras’ publicly announced gifts since 2019 now total more than $30 million, on top of decades of steadier, quieter support.
The pattern is easy to read. They give where their own lives were shaped: the college that formed Joe, the hospital that cared for him, the university Julie loves, and the community that built the family business.
This latest gift lands at a moment of real momentum for Albion. Under its Experiential Learning for All guarantee, every student completes at least one hands-on, credit-bearing experience before graduating, from internships and faculty-mentored research to clinical placements, community service, consulting projects, and study abroad.
That promise is paired with a new faculty-designed core curriculum, the first full revision in 27 years, built around the skills employers value most, including quantitative reasoning, civic literacy, and problem-solving.
The results are measurable. Within six months of graduation, 98 percent of Albion graduates are employed, in graduate school, or in service programs, and a decade out, alumni rank in the top 20 percent nationally for earnings.
In 2025 the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education named Albion an Opportunity College, one of just 10 nationally and the only one in Michigan.
Since Webster arrived in 2023, the college has launched its Pathway Forward strategic plan, completed its accreditation review, sharply reduced a $16 million deficit while moving toward a balanced budget, tripled fundraising, and added or renovated nearly 20 student spaces.
This summer, The Chronicle of Higher Education included Albion in its inaugural “Colleges to Watch” issue.
For the Serras, the decision to give without strings is the point. They have watched Albion’s leadership steady the college and set a direction, and they have chosen to trust it.
A former Briton basketball captain and a kindergarten teacher who spent her career helping children take their first steps in school are betting that the next generation of Albion students will find the same thing Joe did there: a place that changes a life.