The University of Auckland has launched a new fundraising campaign, with a $100 million target.
More than $48 million had already been raised.
At a campaign launch dinner last night, Vice-Chancellor Professor Stuart McCutcheon said, "we must, as a nation, do much more to create the kind of intellectual environment that nurtures the country's best minds".
The campaign was the most ambitious to have been undertaken by a university.
He said that, like other leading international universities, the University of Auckland would build on its efforts to contribute to society.
Two major donations were made in the last two weeks to the campaign.
Charles Bidwill, connected to some of the country's best known companies in the 1980s -- Ceramco, Steel & Tube, Bendon and Baycorp -- has committed $3 million to establish the Charles Bidwill/ University of Auckland Business School Entrepreneurial Challenge. The Goodfellow family also made a substantial donation to establish repatriation fellowships.
Starting from 2009, these will support outstanding expatriate graduates to return to New Zealand to pursue careers in medical research.
The university's campaign would focus on building partnerships in five key areas, health, child development, improved economic development through excellence in business education, better infrastructure, and ongoing scholarship in the arts and humanities.
