Trustee Steven Roth '62 Tu'63, his wife Daryl Roth and their family donated $15 million to the College to endow two new professorships and an academic faculty fellowship, according to a College press release on Tuesday.
The Roth Family Distinguished Professorship in the Arts and Sciences and the Roth Family Distinguished Professorship at Tuck School of Business will aim to support and recruit "exceptional and innovative" faculty members, Dean of the Faculty Michael Mastanduno said in an interview with The Dartmouth.
"We would be looking for leading scholars and teachers to fulfill [these professorships]," Mastanduno said. "This is a kind of gift that deserves the chance to attract someone truly extraordinary who is doing cutting-edge research. We will set a very high bar for this kind of hire."
The Office of the Dean of the Faculty will be responsible for determining the recruitment criteria for the professorship in the College of Arts and Sciences and determining which departments can receive support from the new professorship, Mastanduno said. The professorships will target those whose work has been acknowledged on a national or international scale, according to the press release.
"The crafting of the gift itself was something led by [College President Jim Yong Kim] and [Provost] Carol Folt," Roth said in an interview with The Dartmouth. "We eventually came up with the idea of two professorships and a fellowship because it would allow Dartmouth to retract and retain the very best in education."
The gift will also fund the Roth Family Fellowship in the Arts and Sciences, a $250,000 annual fellowship that will bring "distinguished visiting scholars" to the College, the press release said.
"The fellowship is a very extraordinary gift that allows us to bring someone who wouldn't ordinarily come without the incentive of the College being able to provide salary and support for other kinds of professional activity," Mastanduno said. "This gives us a chance to bring luster to the faculty and greater Dartmouth intellectual community."
The fellowship will "ideally" be one year long, although the final details are still in developing stages, Mastanduno said.
"We probably would not turn down someone with a great fit if they could only come for six to nine months," he said. "Most importantly, we want to bring someone for a long enough period so he or she can have a real impact on our community."
The Roth family made the decision to make a "substantial gift" to the College a couple of years ago, according to Roth.
"We started thinking about a building and what the purpose would be, but after going around we decided as a family that [the new professorships] would be more appropriate and that we would like to support the academic excellence of our school, which would even be better than a building," Roth said. "The excellence in teaching is what really differentiates Dartmouth and that's the direction we wanted to go in."
The Roth family's $15-million gift is a "welcome addition" to the College's $1.3 billion Campaign for the Dartmouth Experience, and reflects the campaign's priority of raising money to endow professorships across the arts and sciences, Mastanduno said.
Roth is the chairman of the board of Vornado Realty Trust, the third-largest American real estate investment trust. He is also the co-founder and managing general partner of Interstate Properties and chairman and chief executive officer of real estate investment trust Alexander's Inc. Roth has been a member of the College's Board of Trustees since 2008 and is chair of the College's Finance Committee.
Roth's wife, Daryl Roth, is a New York theater producer who has produced over 70 plays both on and off-Broadway. Their daughter Amanda Roth Salzhauer '93, son-in-law Michael Salzhauer '84 and son Jordan Roth also contributed to the donation.
"We're a Dartmouth family I went to Dartmouth, my sister's reunion is about 15 months away, my daughter and son-in-law went to Dartmouth," Steven Roth said. "We're devoted to Dartmouth and we're lucky that we have the wherewithal to continue to contribute."
The Roth family previously donated $1.1 million to support the construction of the Roth Center for Jewish Life, which was completed in 1996.
"This is a nice thing that my father-in-law did," Salzhauer said in an interview with The Dartmouth.
"The Roth family's investment will support thought leaders whose innovative spirit and record of accomplishment will invigorate the intellectual community, inspire our students and contribute to the broader society," Kim said in the press release.
