$18 million gift from S. Kent Rockwell to School of Business at RMU
Robert Morris University announced an $18 million gift from the S. Kent Rockwell Foundation and the Kent Rockwell family, the largest personal gift in the university’s history and a tremendous investment in entrepreneurial and business education.
The gift, which was announced during the inauguration ceremony of President Michelle L. Patrick, names Robert Morris University’s business school the Rockwell School of Business.
RMU is already home to the S. Kent Rockwell Fellowship for Entrepreneurship, a two-year program for juniors and seniors designed to support students who are building entrepreneurial ventures and initiatives by providing a rich environment of knowledge, practice, coaching, and opportunity.
This program, along with the newly established S. Kent Rockwell Professorship of Entrepreneurship, are both endowed as part of the Rockwell gift.
“This is a transformational moment for Robert Morris University,” said President Patrick, former dean of the business school. “With this gift, the Rockwell family has tied its legacy to ours and propelled our institution into its next century. Inspired and enabled by their generosity, we will continue to cultivate the spirit of entrepreneurship in everything we do and change the lives of our students for generations to come.”
The Rockwell School of Business is Robert Morris University’s founding academic school rooted in the institution’s beginning as a school of accountancy in 1921.
Today the school serves almost a third of the graduate and undergraduate students at RMU.
“We have been thrilled by the results of our work with RMU in creating the S. Kent Rockwell Fellowship in Entrepreneurship and are excited to be expanding our commitment to the university and its students starting with the Rockwell School of Business,” said S. Kent Rockwell, chairman of the S. Kent Rockwell Foundation.
“We have been thrilled by the results of our work with RMU in creating the S. Kent Rockwell Fellowship in Entrepreneurship and are excited to be expanding our commitment to the university and its students starting with the Rockwell School of Business,” said S. Kent Rockwell, chairman of the S. Kent Rockwell Foundation.
“We believe the spirit of entrepreneurship moves us forward and has the potential to change the world for the better. Our partnership with RMU creates new opportunities that will ensure that its graduates continue to bring this spirit to their businesses, their careers, and their communities.”
The S. Kent Rockwell Foundation aims to improve four general areas of philanthropic endeavor: conservation, education, community, and entrepreneurship and innovation. Located in Pittsburgh, PA, the foundation is particularly interested in allocating efforts to environmental improvement programs that can provide a positive impact on communities, educational systems and individual efforts and goals such as entrepreneurship and innovation.
“Robert Morris University embraces a culture of entrepreneurship not just within the Rockwell School of Business, but across the entire institution,” President Patrick said. “Like the Rockwell family, we believe that the spirit of entrepreneurship and the embrace of innovative new ideas can change the world. We’re grateful for this generous gift from the S. Kent Rockwell Foundation and the S. Kent Rockwell family and the many opportunities it will help create for our students.”
S. Kent Rockwell is the Chairman of the Board of the S. Kent Rockwell Foundation. He is also the Chief Executive Officer of Rockwell Venture Capital (RVC): a company which he founded in 1983. RVC has invested in a variety of technology companies since its inception.
Mr. Rockwell is currently the Chairman of the Board of The ExOne Company. He has held this investment since 2008. The ExOne Company is his 4th public Company in his career in which he has held a CEO role.
Mr. Rockwell retired from Argon ST as Vice Chairman in 2008. He is former Chairman, CEO, and President of Astrotech International Corporation, and SensysTech. He also served as a Group President and member of the board of directors of Rockwell International Inc. from 1973 to 1983.
He has invested in a variety of businesses in addition to ExOne including Rockwell Forest Products Inc., Strata Products Worldwide (an underground mining services company), Appalachian Timber Service (supplying quality timber products for railroads), Strata Proximity Systems (providing proximity detection and avoidance systems for mining operations), and Pro Grass, LLC, (a synthetic turf supplier.)
Mr. Rockwell earned a B.A. in both economics and business from Lafayette College in Easton, PA and attended graduate school at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Mr. Rockwell serves on the Board of Trustees of the S. Kent Rockwell Foundation as well as Lafayette College. He has gone from being the youngest trustee on the Lafayette College board in 1971 to the oldest trustee in 2018. (did not serve between 1973-2015)
The mission of the foundation is described as follows: “The S. Kent Rockwell Foundation was established on the basis that we, as residents of this beautiful planet, have an inherited duty to continue to ensure that the precious environmental resources, landscape, and characteristics that have formed this world continue to remain viable in our future existence. The foundation focuses to improve four general areas of philanthropic endeavor- conservation, education, community, and entrepreneurship and innovation. Located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the S. Kent Rockwell Foundation is established with the principal concept to establish a more coherent way to preserve and enhance our world’s greatest natural treasures.
The foundation is particularly interested in allocating efforts into environmental improvement programs that can provide a positive impact for communities, educational systems, and individual efforts and goals such as entrepreneurship and innovation.
These specific areas can be vastly improved upon and help continue to shape the world in a more positive way.
There are many opportunities within the United States to provide relief efforts and more initiative overall to repair areas that have been damaged or even destroyed in the environment for a vast number of reasons.
Conservation and enhancement of damaged natural resources and land continues to be a focus for the foundation as it serves as one of the larger reasons that we specifically as inhabitants of this earth have taken advantage of our natural surroundings and underappreciated it to a certain extent.
It has been proven, however, in many instances that the damage caused in natural properties can be reversed with the proper methods and resources. Our general humanitarian effort is the sole purpose in providing support as a foundation. Together, we can continue to find ways to build better and more environmentally friendly systems and resources.”