The College of Business Administration has changed its name to the Mendoza College of Business in recognition of the largest single gift in the history of Notre Dame – $35 million from 1973 alumnus Thomas F. Mendoza and his wife, Kathy.
Tom Mendoza, who earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from ND, is senior vice president of sales and marketing for the Silicon Valley firm Network Appliance, described as the leading provider of network attached data access and management solutions. In 1999 Fortune magazine ranked NetApp as the nation’s fourth-fastest-growing company.
Kathy Mendoza is NetApp’s senior director of worldwide strategic alliances. She is also the founder of Angel Food Partners, which invests in and promotes start-up high technology firms in Silicon Valley.
The Mendoza’s gift is a component of Notre Dame’s Generations campaign, which with nine months remaining had raised $903 million – $136 more than its $767 million goal.
The largest previous single gift to Notre Dame came from the late shopping mall magnate Edward J. DeBartolo of Youngstown, Ohio. His $33 million benefaction in 1989 underwrote construction of DeBartolo Hall, the DeBartolo quad and the Marie P. DeBartolo Performing Arts Center, which will break ground this year at the south end of the quad.
Earlier this year the College of Business Administration shortened its name to the College of Business to reflect its increasingly diverse offerings. Founded in 1921, the college is Notre Dame’s second –largest with some 1,800 undergraduates and 780 advanced degree students. Its business ethics curriculum is rated the best in the nation by Business Week magazine. And earlier this year Forbes magazine ranked Notre Dame’s MBA among the top 20 for return on investment, meaning how much further graduates were ahead when weighing their salary gains against the costs of attaining the degree and wages they lost while enrolled.