The University of Michigan is using a $3 million gift from attorney Mark Bernstein and his wife to move one university program onto campus property, while another $3 million fund will help find off-campus applications for engineering and medical innovations at the school.
Bernstein, president of The Sam Bernstein Law Firm PLLC in Farmington Hills and a member of the University Board of Regents, and his wife Rachel Bendit made the donation toward a proposed Bernstein-Bendit Hall on the Ann Arbor campus.
The new building will relocate the William Monroe Trotter Multicultural Center from an off-campus building on Washtenaw Avenue. The board approved the building name at a meeting Thursday.
"Rachel and I are honored to support the legacy of all who have advanced the enriching and empowering mission of Trotter since its founding — the generations of U-M students who have been activists for diversity, and the current U-M students whose advocacy helped guide the vision for this new building," Bernstein said in a statement.
In a separate vote on Thursday, the regents also approved a new Monroe-Brown Seed Fund, with a $3 million gift from the Monroe-Brown Foundation in Kalamazoo County. The fund is devoted to higher education, to help transition commercially viable engineering and medical research projects into the marketplace.
The new seed fund will be a collaboration between the College of Engineering's Center for Entrepreneurship and the Fast Forward Medical Innovation program at UM Medical School, and will award seed money to biomedical startup businesses.