Smith Business magazine-summer24-paperturn - Flipbook - Page 8
PROFILES
A GAME-CHANGING GIFT
Boyle’s $1M Gift Supports New Virtual Teaching Studio
The last time Bill Boyle
’81 made a big investment
in Smith (2019), it was to
launch the Dingman Center
for Entrepreneurship’s
campus-wide Terp Startup
Fellows program to help
students turn their ideas
into companies. “We’re
hoping that we can help
them get to the next level,”
he said.
Now Boyle is helping the
Smith School take learning
to the next level—with a
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summer 2024
He encouraged graduates
to “create a brighter future—
for all of us.”
Dean Prabhudev
Konana called Boyle’s gift
“game changing.” It will
support the Smith School’s
strategic plan to reimagine
learning by renovating and
modernizing classrooms.
“This classroom will allow
new $1 million gift to fund
the construction of a virtual us to deliver online courses
and research content to
teaching studio that will
learners around the world,”
be the 昀椀rst of its kind on
says Holly Mann, director
UMD’s campus.
of information technology.
“My hope is everyone
The media studio will be
keeps pushing for positive
equipped with advanced
change. That you challenge
technologies for video
the status quo, and break
production. It will also have
through existing barriers
a
昀氀oor-to-ceiling video wall
and roadblocks for a better
tomorrow,” Boyle said in the to provide an immersive
experience for remote
keynote address at Smith’s
learners. Interactive tools
spring 2024 undergraduate
will
make collaboration
commencement ceremony.
between instructors and
their students easier.
“We cannot express
enough gratitude for Bill’s
leadership and unwavering
commitment to our
institution, as well as
his service and friendship to
the school,” Konana says.
Boyle, who co-founded
and ran internet and
telecom 昀椀ber provider
FiberGate Inc. before
selling it in 2012, has been a
long-time donor and active
advisory board member and
mentor with the Dingman
Center, where he works with
several startups.
In addition to funding
Terp Startup Fellows, he
also mentors students in
the program and funded
Dingman’s Terp Startup
Accelerator summer program.
rhsmith.umd.edu