October 7, 2005
Indianapolis' Manns pledge $3 million for e-Enterprise Center
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WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Purdue University on Friday (Oct. 7) announced that it will name its e-Enterprise Center in Discovery Park for an Indianapolis couple that has pledged $3 million to the park.
The $10 million Gerald D. and Edna E. Mann Hall will be located in Discovery Park, Purdue's interdisciplinary research and enterprise hub. Mann Hall will be the sixth building in the complex on the campus' west edge. The Bindley Bioscience Center was dedicated Oct. 1, and the Birck Nanotechnology Center was dedicated Saturday (Oct. 8). The facility naming is subject to approval by the university's board of trustees.
"The $3 million Mann gift is another example of the vision and generosity of the Purdue family," said Purdue President Martin C. Jischke. "Mann Hall will not only provide research and administrative space for a number of our existing centers, but it will also provide the information technology infrastructure for Discovery Park."
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The Lilly Endowment will match $1 million of the Mann gift with another $2 million to create two endowed positions: a directorship for the e-Enterprise center and the Gerald and Edna Mann director of the Bindley Bioscience Center. The balance of the gift will go to the building fund.
Gerald "Jerry" Mann, a Newport, N.C., native, received his master's degree in civil engineering from Purdue in 1956. He is founder and senior partner at Mann Properties LLC, a commercial and residential real estate development company and family business that operates in Indiana and North Carolina. The company has several projects in Lafayette and West Lafayette.
Joseph Pekny, director of e-Enterprise Center, said the couple's donation marks a significant step forward.
"The Mann gift greatly increases the e-Enterprise Center's ability to address research and engagement issues associated with health-care engineering, critical infrastructure replacement/development, and a whole host of informatics opportunities to solve critical societal problems," he said.
"The generation, organization and dissemination of information are keys to solving most of the grand-challenge problems that we face. As a long-term investment in e-Enterprise Center capability, the Mann family is providing the base that allows us to persistently and strategically bring Purdue resources to bear in grand-challenge areas."
Endowed funds, such as the Mann gift, remain intact in perpetuity, and yearly earnings are used to augment salaries, laboratories and facility operations. A portion of the earnings is reinvested each year so inflation does not degrade the endowment principal.
Gerald Mann said, "Purdue rounded me out with the educational opportunities necessary to make a contribution to engineering. I chose Purdue because civil engineering offered me a $150 per month stipend – $40 more than North Carolina State University, where I got my bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering. I switched to civil because I wanted to get some of the interstate highway construction Eisenhower announced in 1952."
After college, Mann, with the assistance of Edna as his financial and management adviser, started American Testing and Engineering Corp. (ATEC), which grew to 1,500 employees in 52 offices. In 1990 its revenues were $120 million. In 1970, Mann said, he started a real estate development company "as a hobby."
The hobby grew into Mann Properties LLC, which his children now run. Mann still works a "couple of hours a day, sometimes more, as a land planner and financial adviser." He and his wife spend as much time as they can with their grandchildren, winter in Naples, Fla., and come to West Lafayette for football games.
Edna Mann is from Barbourville, Ky., and attended Union College in her hometown, where she majored in business and applied psychology. The Manns' three children also attended Purdue.
"Our children have chosen to live in Indiana," she said. "We have four grandsons, and we hope they will all attend Purdue and be proud of their grandpa.
"Through the years, we have contributed to scholarships at Purdue, but we wanted to do something more substantial. Purdue was very good to us, and we're happy to have retained the connection. We think Discovery Park is a great plan, and we really do believe it will raise Purdue to the next level, and we want to be part of that."
Mann Hall will house a number of centers and initiatives already operating at Purdue. They include the Regenstrief Center for Healthcare Engineering, Center for Advanced Manufacturing, Center for Research on Information Assurance and Security, and parts of Information Technology at Purdue. The Homeland Security Institute is located administratively at the e-Enterprise Center but physically housed in the Krannert Building.
Writer: Mike Lillich, (765) 494-2077, mlillich@purdue.edu
Sources: Martin Jischke, (765) 494-9708
Joe Pekny, (765) 497-9969, pekny@purdue.edu
Gerald and Edna Mann, (317) 496-0535, (317) 849-3626
Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu
Note to Journalists: Broadcast-quality video of an experimental robotic surgery device, associated with the e-Enterprise Center's Regenstrief Center for Healthcare Engineering, is available from Jesica Webb, Purdue News Service, at (765) 494-2079, jwebb@purdue.edu.
Related news release:
Lilly Endowment grants $25 million to Purdue's Discovery Park
PHOTO CAPTION:
Grant Robinson, a doctoral student in mechanical engineering technology from Leeds, England, uses a high-speed milling machine in one of Purdue's advanced manufacturing laboratories. The Center for Advanced Manufacturing, and several other centers, will be located in Mann Hall in Discovery Park, the university's research and enterprise hub. Mann Hall is named for Gerald and Edna Mann, who have made a $3 million pledge to Discovery Park operations. (Purdue News Service file photo/David Umberger)
A publication-quality file photograph is available at https://www.purdue.edu/uns/uns/images/+2005/adv-mfgr-tech2.jpg
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