Millie Phillips donates US$15 milllion to the Tel Aviv University
In a significant boost to its US$1 billion Global Capital Campaign, Tel Aviv University is naming its Student City student housing complex in honor of Sydney’s Millie Phillips.
The dedication follows a generous gift of US$15millio by Mrs. Phillips to TAU campus life and Israeli higher education in general.
Funds will be channeled toward the Millie Phillips Development Fund, which will bring home exceptional young Israeli faculty members, award graduate and international student scholarships, and bolster the campus’s physical development. Mrs. Phillips’ extraordinary gift will reinforce TAU’s mission to nurture new generations of Israeli innovators, leaders and educators as a means of helping Israel remain strong and competitive in the global arena.
Millie Phillips
Millie Phillips is one of Australia’s most prominent businesswomen and philanthropists of Jewish causes. In the 1960s she built up a conglomerate of motels, nursing homes and retirement facilities, diversifying in 1969 into mineral exploration and floating several public companies. Today she continues to build and develop land, and to own and operate assisted-living facilities and retirement villages.
Mrs. Phillips is a Tel Aviv University Honorary Doctor and ardent benefactor, having previously supported the Millie Phillips Floor at the Check Point Building, currently under construction at the heart of the campus, and the Millie Phillips Lobby at the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History, which is slated to open in 2018.
Millie Phillips Student City is the largest, most ambitious and most prestigious building project in Tel Aviv University’s history. The 645,000 square foot (60,000 square meter) complex offers residential units for over 1,700 students and faculty from Israel and overseas. Dominating the southern section of the campus, it is the University’s most visible landmark, and is seen daily by tens of thousands of commuters as they drive on the nearby Ayalon freeway, Israel’s busiest thoroughfare.
The complex was built in order to increase affordable housing for talented and high potential Israelis from the periphery. And it has paid off, almost doubling the number of dormitory beds at TAU. Furthermore, with a range of family suites available, the complex has boosted the University’s capacity to recruit married graduate students and young faculty members with families.
Millie Phillips Student City is beautifully landscaped and features verdant expanses of grass and trees where residents can study, meet or simply relax in the sun. Offering shops, cafes, gardens, promenades and recreational facilities, the complex has become an important and vibrant fixture in the Greater Tel Aviv cultural cityscape.
Based on the tremendous success of Student City, plans are now underway to construct three more buildings. Combined, these will provide an additional 800 beds, thereby increasing the total capacity of the complex to 2,500 beds.
well done and thank you
Bless her heart…..