A just announced, $35.5 million gift to UCI from Paul and Jo Butterworth marks the largest new addition to the Business Journal’s list of Largest Charitable Gifts of 2022, the centerpiece of this week’s print edition.
The gift of the couple’s estate, which ranks No. 4 on the list (see page 20), is notable for other reasons: it’s the largest-ever gift to UCI from alumni, the school says.
Jo Butterworth earned a B.A. in 1975 from the School of Social Sciences at UCI, while Paul Butterworth first came to UCI in 1969 as an undergraduate in the School of Engineering.
In his third year, he transitioned to computer science, graduating with a B.S. in that discipline in 1974. In the mid-1970s, UCI established a master’s degree program in computer science, and Butterworth was one of its early graduates, the school said in a statement announcing the donation.
Butterworth would go on to co-found and serve as chief technology officer at enterprise software developer Vantiq. He also co-founded cloud platform development company Emotive and service-oriented architecture management firm AmberPoint, acquired by Oracle in 2010. He was a co-founder and senior vice president of Forte Software, bought by Sun Microsystems. He also served in engineering and technology roles at Oracle, Sun and Ingres.
“UCI is where I began my career as a computer scientist and software engineer,” he said in a statement. “While at UCI, I met another person who was a graduate student at the time, and we ended up working together well into the 1980s. You could say UCI is where all of my success really started.”
The couple’s $35.5 million gift will support the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences. It will be allocated in a variety of ways, including awards, scholarships and fellowships for students and to finance new research initiatives and faculty chairs, UCI said.
OC and some of its more consumer-focused businesses were scheduled to get some airtime during the weekend’s Super Bowl; see Emily Santiago-Molina’s story on page 11 for the tourism board of Newport Beach making its inaugural push into advertising during the big game.
For what’s considered the Super Bowl of action sports, Huntington Beach’s US Open of Surfing, there will be one less local affiliation this summer. Costa Mesa’s Vans, title sponsor of the event since 2013, isn’t renewing for 2023, it said last week.
“The decision to not renew our title sponsorship of the US Open of Surf comes as we look to prioritize several of our owned events, activations and contests,” Vans said last week.
Parent company VF Corp. (NYSE: VFC) is looking to improve Vans’ sales in its largest market, North America, which fell 13% last quarter to $656 million, it disclosed last week.
The parent company said, “turning around Vans,” particularly in North America, would be a near-term priority going forward. Vans’ overall sales of $926.9 million for the quarter was down 12.6%.
