Goodman makes historic donation [to Laurentain’s School of Mines] – by Jonathan Migneault (Sudbury Star – October 16, 2012)

The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.

A substantial donation to Laurentian University’s upcoming School of Mines will help propel the school to the top of the world heap in the discipline, said Laurentian President Dominic Giroux.

On Monday the university announced that an “historical gift” from Ned Goodman, the president and CEO of the Dundee Corporation, has put the school ahead of the halfway mark to create a $20 million endowment fund for the new mining school.

“To have the Goodman name associated with Laurentian University is exceptional,” Giroux said.

Through the Dundee group of financial companies Goodman helped build a $50-billion mutual fund entity. After he was laid off by Noranda in 1960 he went on to get his MBA from the University of Toronto and eventually became an important financier of Canada’s mining industry.

To honour Goodman and his donation, the exact amount of which has not been disclosed, the new school will be officially named The Goodman School of Mines. “It’s a school that needs the investment,” Goodman said about Laurentian. “It’s in the right place and it has the right background and it should be one of the best mining schools in the world, but it’s not there yet.”

What Laurentian is missing, he said, is a strong focus on the commercial aspects of the mining industry. “We intend to add a business portion to the geology portion so people understand why they’re looking at the rocks,” he said.

Giroux said the new school will be more adaptive to the needs of industry and tailor short-term programs to meet those specific needs.

Laurentian’s mining engineering program, and the Department of Earth Sciences, will remain under the Faculty of Science and Engineering. The Goodman School of Mines will provide resources to those programs so they can be more flexible in meeting real-world demands. A new executive program will also fall under the School of Mines, which will answer directly to the vice-president of academic programs.

“We don’t want the school of mines to be limited or confined to the traditional academic boundaries of science and engineering,” Giroux said.

Laura Katz, a second year masters student with Laurentian’s earth science program, said the new school will be a big benefit to future students. “Students will have more opportunities in basically every aspect of the mining industry,” she said.

Laurentian is currently undertaking a search for the school’s executive director. Giroux said they are looking for an industry leader with a PhD and added an announcement should be made by early December.

A global council will advise the director in the new year and the school should take off from there, Giroux said.

For the original version of this article, please go to the Sudbury Star website: http://www.thesudburystar.com/2012/10/16/goodman-makes-historic-donation