Advanced Materials Center at UMD Receives $1 Million Gift

DULUTH, Minn. –The University of Minnesota Duluth’s Advanced Materials Center received a $1,000,000 gift from the Advanced Drainage Systems Foundation.  ADS is one of the largest plastic recyclers in North America and provides septic wastewater solutions.

UMD Chancellor David McMillan, said this is likely the single largest gift the Advanced Materials Center has received.

The Director of Sustainability at ADS, Dan Figola, explained how the money will be used. “So, the gift we decided to give to the university is $1,000,000 over the next four years,” said Figola.

“So, a $250,000 a-year portion will go into scholarship endowment. So, at the end of the four years when that is fully funded, it will provide approximately $10,000 a year and scholarship opportunity in perpetuity. About $125,000 of that will go specifically to funding research projects,” Figola said.

Sara Stone is a Master’s student in the Advanced Materials Center and she is pleased that part of the money will be used for scholarships. Stone said, “Realistic real-world problems with one point of view, you get biased results. So, by having a portion of this gift be for under-represented groups, we can incorporate more diverse backgrounds and more diverse experiences and opinions to better solve these real-world issues.”

Figola also said UMD was chosen for the $1,000,000 gift because of the work it is doing to help develop ways to further use recycled plastic in ADS products.