Michael Smith's $13M donation to Colorado State includes $3.5 to on-campus stadium

Thank you, Michael Smith. That’s the resounding message coming from fans, and colleges within Colorado State University on Thursday morning.

It was announced on Thursday that Smith has donated $13 million to the university, and here’s how it breaks down per the school’s release:

In total, the $13 million gift will include:

• A $5 million gift to create 50 full-tuition scholarships in the College of Business, in honor of the College’s 50th anniversary – 13 endowed Michael Smith Elite Business Scholars awards and 37 Michael Smith 50th Anniversary Scholarship awards.
• A $3.7 million gift to complete funding to build the Michael Smith Natural Resources Building in the Warner College of Natural Resources.
• A $3.5 million gift to the new multipurpose on-campus stadium project; the Michael & Iris Smith Alumni Center within the stadium will be home to the University’s 205,000 living alumni.
• A $400,000 gift to create 10 full-tuition Michael Smith Scholarships in the Department of Geosciences in the Warner College of Natural Resources.
• And another $400,000 gift to create 10 full-tuition Michael Smith Scholarships in the Department of Chemistry in the College of Natural Sciences.

Now, while we’re supporters of everything Colorado State, this news is great! However, the most important money to us sports fans is the $3.5 million which is going to the new on-campus stadium.

That money means the creation of the Michael & Iris Smith Alumni Center within the stadium which looks like it will be located on the northeast corner of the giant building as the rendering shows.

“Michael Smith is a brilliant, visionary business leader who, with this gift, has extended that vision to Colorado State University,” CSU President Tony Frank said. “We are humbled by his generosity and profoundly inspired by what we believe this will do for our students, alumni, and academic programs. The breadth and reach of the generosity from Michael and Iris Smith is truly unparalleled, with the potential for a transformative impact on three of our top academic colleges and our new on campus stadium currently under construction.”

“I owe much of my success to the education I received at CSU and the combination of strong science and mathematics that enabled me to learn the oil and gas business,” Smith said. “My career has been built around the opportunity this country’s energy business has spawned, and I hope my gifts help CSU to continue providing a premier education to generations of geologists, chemists and business leaders.”

In 2008, Smith was awarded an honorary doctorate by Colorado State and was a chemistry major when he attended the school in the 1970s. In 1981, he founded E&P, a Fort Collins based company which he sold to Sone Energy in 2001. Currently, he’s the chairman and chief executive of Freeport LNG, based in Freeport, Texas.