UMD Shatters Fundraising Record as Campaign Builds Momentum

Robert H. Smith ’50 was a famed D.C.-area builder, and his wife, Clarice, a celebrated artist. Their twin passions are imprinted across the UMD campus, on the business school and performing arts center that bear their names, and in the scholarships and programs there that they supported.

Now their son, David Bruce Smith, has made a new $10 million bequest on behalf of the family’s foundation to continue their legacy at Maryland.

The funds, split evenly between his late parents’ longtime interests at UMD, will establish the Robert H. Smith Do Good Endowed Professorship in Business Leadership, Technology and Societal Impact, and the Robert H. Smith Endowed Faculty Fellowship in Business and Innovation, in addition to other support for the business school. At The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, the gift will enhance its productions and programming initiatives.

The arts and business, says Smith, “polish one another in the same way that my mother and father complemented each other.” 

The Smith family is one of the largest benefactors of the Smith School, University Libraries and the College of Arts and Humanities, which includes The Clarice, the Michelle Smith Collaboratory for Visual Culture and the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library, the latter two of which are named for the Smiths’ late daughter. 

“You can’t tell the story of the University of Maryland without the story of the Smith family, just as thousands of students, scholars and artists wouldn’t have a home on campus without the landmark structures and institutions bearing Robert H., Clarice and Michelle Smith’s names,” says UMD President Darryll J. Pines.

The first time Stephen M. Schanwald ’77 golfed with Michael Jordan, the Bulls superstar broke Schanwald’s nose. During practice swings before the first tee shot, Schanwald forgot to take into account Jordan’s unusually broad wingspan and got whacked in the face by a club head. 

The Bulls’ executive vice president of business operations at the time, Schanwald raced to the clubhouse to wash off the blood before rejoining the match. “Bulls play hurt,” he jokes. 

Schanwald’s passion for golf—“my love affair,” he says—will now benefit the men’s and women’s golf programs at UMD. He has made a new commitment of $15 million to his alma mater, split between supporting construction of a state-of-the-art golf performance center on UMD’s campus to help student-athletes improve their game, and growing the Stephen M. Schanwald Sports Management Program in the Smith School. (He previously made an $18 million gift in 2024 to the program and Maryland Athletics, for a total commitment to UMD of at least $33 million.) 

UMD officials aim to finalize the design of the estimated 5,000-square-foot facility next year. It will include indoor and outdoor hitting bays, a dynamic putting lab, and sensors and high-speed cameras that spit out metrics like club speed, angle and force at contact. Other technological tools like Doppler radar will track the ball’s distance and spin rate.

Smith School Dean Prabhudev Konana expressed gratitude for Schanwald’s continued investments in the sports management program, a multidisciplinary initiative designed to prepare students for global leadership roles. 

“His transformative involvement extends beyond his generous gift,” he says. “He offers his time and extensive industry knowledge to ensure students in the program are prepared to become leaders and innovators in the business of sports.”

Innovative approaches using climate data to improve weather forecasts and save lives. Expanding the frontiers of live performance. Fighting the world’s fastest-growing neurological disease.

Those are among the goals behind a new $8.16 million commitment to UMD honoring the late Eugenia Brin, wife of mathematics Professor Emeritus Michael Brin and mother of Google co-founder Sergey Brin ’93 and Samuel Brin ’09. 

It directs nearly $3.1 million to an endowed chair and lectureship aimed at improving the use of data in meteorology and climate science, an equal amount to support the development of “expansive theater” in nontraditional performance venues, and $2 million to support an endowed chair for Parkinson’s disease research. Collectively, the family’s long record of philanthropic support of the university totals some $65 million.

The funding for the endowed chairs will be matched by a $3.25 million award from the Maryland E-Nnovation Initiative Fund, a state program created to spur basic and applied research in scientific and technical fields at colleges and universities. 

The Moscow-born Eugenia emigrated to Maryland in 1979 with her family, including a young Sergey, her husband, and his mother, Maya Brin, who later became a Russian language instructor at UMD. Eugenia soon found a job at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center researching topics related to climate and meteorology. In 1998, at age 50, she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Eugenia went on to become a leading advocate of research into the neurodegenerative disorder. She died in 2024. 

This gift, says Michael Brin, “is shaped by the story of her life, from her career as a NASA climate scientist, to her lifelong love for the arts, to her battle against a terrible, but we believe, ultimately conquerable disease.”