$11 million gift to university from former student Bernard John Lucci

Villanova University has received a gift of more than $11 million, part of which will fund the ongoing buildout of a new campus library.

The donation comes from Bernard John Lucci, a Montgomery County resident who took classes through Villanova’s Senior Citizen Personal Enrichment Program within its College of Professional Studies. From Lucci’s donation, $5 million has been earmarked for the program, which is being renamed the Bernard John Lucci Senior Citizen Personal Enrichment Program.

The remaining more than $6 million of the gift will go toward funding an endowed chair in Italian Studies at the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences as well as supporting the university’s ongoing work on Falvey Library at Vic Maggitti Hall.

The $150 million, 150,000-square-foot library project will now include the Bernard John Lucci Doctoral and Graduate Office Suite in honor of Lucci’s gift.

The Falvey Library project is backed by a $20 million lead gift made by Victor J. Maggitti in March 2022.

Villanova has appointed art history professor Timothy McCall as the inaugural Lucci Chair in Italian Studies.

Lucci took personal enrichment classes at Villanova between 2005 and 2012, primarily focusing on Italian culture and language, the university said.

A resident of the Jeffersonville neighborhood of Norristown Lucci studied chemical engineering at the University of Michigan and received an MBA from the University of Detroit Mercy.

According to documents related to his University of Michigan gift approved by the school’s board of regents, Lucci was born near Wilkes-Barre and moved to Detroit at the age of 3. As a youth, he caddied at a suburban Detroit country club and later worked summers selling ice cream as a Good Humor Man. His time as a caddie earned him a scholarship from the Western Golf Association to help pay for college.

After graduation, Lucci worked in chemical engineering and later transitioned to a career as a financial advisor.

Lucci’s contribution is the second gift of more than $10 million Villanova has received so far this year.

As reported here earlier, in March, the school received $15 million from former Sunoco CEO John G. Drosdick to be the namesake of a newly expanded building for its College of Engineering, a 150,000-square-foot expansion carrying a price tag of $125 million.

Villanova, which has an endowment of some $1.2 billion.