The school will use the money to establish the Conrads Program for Integrated Sciences, which will expand and sustain the school’s STEM instruction.
The new program is named for SLUH alumnus Bob Conrads, Class of 1965, and his wife, Sherry Conrads, who announced their donation before hundreds of people at a celebration of the 100th year of the school’s Oakland Avenue campus. The school was founded in 1818.
“Our hope is that this gift provides some of the financial resources to expand and build upon the (STEM) foundation that has been in place for many years,” Bob Conrads said. “So that we can provide the experiences and the understanding to the entire student body of these technologies that have become so important in our lives.”
SLUH President Alan Carruthers praised the gift.
“STEM is a costly program, and this gift allows us to not only make it accessible, but also to supply excellence in STEM programming to the SLUH students that come from almost 100 different zip codes,” he said.
Conrads, who grew up in south St. Louis near Francis Park, launched a television repair business as a teenager.
That sparked a lifelong passion for science, engineering and physics for him. He went on to work for McKinsey & Co., the international consulting firm. There he worked with Toshiba Corp. to develop one of the earliest laptop computers.
In 1994, he became CEO of Indigo America, the company later bought by Hewlett-Packard that is credited with pioneering the digital printing press.
Conrads, who now lives in California, currently serves as chairman of the board at Colchis Capital Management, a San Francisco-based firm.
School officials said the gift will be as transformational as the late Anna Backer’s $400,000 donation in 1924, which led to the creation of the campus on Oakland, and a $500,000 donation in 1936 after her death.
The latter contribution is considered one of the largest philanthropic donations in the history of the St. Louis Archdiocese. SLUH, which has more than 1,000 students, is an all-male Jesuit school affiliated with the Archdiocese but operated independently.
Today, Backer’s gifts are valued at more than $18 million when adjusted for inflation.
Vice President for Advancement Sean Agniel said the school is still evaluating just how to use the gift, but envisions that it will lead to new courses, faculty and classroom technologies covering artificial intelligence, electronics, and cybersecurity among other topics.
STEM stands for science, technology, engineering and math. The school launched a computer-aided design course this fall in expectation of the gift.
“The program is intended to adapt over time, since we know that the pace of technological change is fast, we want to be able to respond to changes in the field,” Agniel said.
These new programs, Agniel said, will likely be housed in the Costigan Innovation Lab, a 5,200-square-foot hands-on classroom that opened recently at SLUH.
The gift from the Conrads family will allow the STEM program expansion without a tuition increase for SLUH families, school administrators said.
“We don’t know exactly what the future holds,” said director of STEM Education Dan See. “We just know we want to expand. We want to give students more opportunities.
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