A representative AI image of a university campus with historic stone academic buildings. (Image Credits: ChatGPT)
Loring Tu donated an eight-figure sum, worth more than $10 million, in honour of his late grandfather, according to the Taiwan Embassy . Tu had taught at Tufts for 38 years when the donation was announced and planned to retire at the end of 2025, and said he wanted the university to have greater financial resources for student assistance. Completed in 2017, the university’s Science and Engineering Complex brought together renovated older buildings with new construction. With facilities made to support collaboration across disciplines, it served the School of Engineering and the School of Arts and Sciences and saw its name changed in November 2024 following Loring Tu’s donation. Loring Tu’s grandfather, Tsungming Tu, was a Taiwanese physician, pharmacologist, and educator who was born in 1893 in Sanzhi, which is now part of New Taipei City, according to the university’s record . Coming from modest beginnings, he grew up in a family mired in financial hardships and, at the age of 10, saw his father, a tea farmer, pass away from injuries sustained in a field accident. In the year 1914, he graduated at the top of his class from Taiwan Governor Medical College, a forerunner of Taipei Imperial University Medical School. By 1922, he had completed his doctoral dissertation, equivalent to a PhD, at Kyoto Imperial University. In 1954, he founded Kaohsiung Medical College, now Kaohsiung Medical University, Taiwan’s first private medical school to bridge the gap for Indigenous communities and people in remote villages who had limited access to doctors.
Because he believed his money could have a greater effect there, although he had studied at Princeton and Harvard, he chose to give to Tufts partly.
His donation was acknowledged by Tufts President Sunil Kumar, who said the gift would support the university’s teaching, research and learning for future generations. A mathematics professor who spent decades teaching at Tufts University built his fortune through the stock market and later gave much of it back to the institution. In response to the gift, the university renamed its Science and Engineering Complex the Tsungming Tu Complex, after his grandfather. In doing so, he achieved the feat of becoming the first Taiwanese professor to obtain a doctorate in medical sciences amid other professors who were mainly Japanese. Following World War II, he was named the first dean of National Taiwan University Medical School. The donation also recognised a family connection that stretched from Tsungming Tu’s medical education work in Taiwan to his grandson’s career in American higher education.
Before he donated to the university, Loring Tu had established two endowed scholarships and supported three on-campus houses that would benefit junior and senior students alike. The initiative came from his own personal experience, as Tu’s life as a student was a success story made possible through financial aid. The financial aid had allowed him to study at McGill University and Princeton University and later secure a PhD at Harvard University.