West Coast Campus Hosts Founders' Day Celebration Carnegie Mellon hosted a Founders' Day celebration in early December to honor Silicon Valley leaders who together have donated more than $1 million to support the establishment of the university's West Coast campus. The event was held in Building 17 of the Shenandoah Plaza in Moffett Field, Calif., where the campus is located. More than 20 donors were honored, including some of Silicon Valley's most famous entrepreneurs. (See list at bottom.) "We welcome Carnegie Mellon to Silicon Valley," said Gordon E. Moore, founder and chairman emeritus of Intel. "Certainly closer contact with their outstanding School of Computer Science can only help the many companies headquartered in the Valley working in various aspects of information processing. We hope the close association will be mutually beneficial." "The more premier educational institutions based in the Valley, the better," added Raymond J. Lane, general partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. "Carnegie Mellon's educational offerings and its multidisciplinary culture are different in style and scope from Stanford and Cal. This will enrich our community." As a former Carnegie Mellon computer science professor (1966-72), Microsoft Senior Researcher Gordon Bell is very familiar with the university's activities. "Carnegie Mellon's strong focus on all aspects of software engineering, including robotics, speech and digital libraries will be beneficial to the Valley and to Carnegie Mellon," Bell said. "I am delighted to see it arrive." James Morris, dean of Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science, has been instrumental in establishing the university's West Coast initiative. "We are generating a unique educational method of learning by doing to the field of software engineering and it seems to work perfectly with the Silicon Valley culture," Morris said. "With its reality-based research programs and professional education, our West Coast campus brings great value to Silicon Valley companies. It's wonderful that so many leaders of the Valley have chosen to invest in us at a time when investments are hard to come by."
"The opening of Carnegie Mellon's West Coast campus represents a watershed event for the Silicon Valley," said Eric Schmidt, chairman and CEO of Google. "Carnegie Mellon is legendary for its ability to pull together the brightest talent, the best ideas and the richest resources, all with a view toward world-class innovation in technology."
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