Harvard Gets $40 Million Gift to Support Teaching Practices

(Updates to add prior Harvard gifts in third paragraph.)

Oct. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Harvard University received a $40 million gift from Rita and Gustave Hauser to support innovations in teaching and learning.

Harvard will use the funding for a grant program available to university faculty, deans, administrators and students, and to enhance classroom spaces to allow for new technologies and experimental teaching methods, the Cambridge, Massachusetts- based school said today in a statement on its website.

The gift is one of many to Harvard from the Hausers, who both attended the university. Others include donations for the construction of Harvard Law School’s Hauser Hall in 1994, and the founding of the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations, at the Kennedy School in 1997.

Gustave Hauser served as chairman and chief executive officer of Warner Cable Communications. Rita Hauser, a former senior partner of law firm Stroock & Stroock & Lavan, also served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.

--Editors: Lisa Wolfson, Niamh Ring

To contact the reporter on this story: Heather Perlberg in New York at hperlberg@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jonathan Kaufman at jkaufman17@bloomberg.net