Spring 2007 - University of Massachusetts Lowell

FaceofPhilanthropy
Roy Zuckerberg: From Textile
He had been a supporter for years.
His first gifts to the University,
going back to the early ’80’s, had
been targeted mostly at athletics—on the
tennis team himself in his Lowell Tech
days, he was a big believer in the power of
sports teams to draw attention, and new
applicants, to a school:
“It only takes one strong team,” Roy
Zuckeberg says today. “One team can do a
lot to raise awareness. I really thought that
was a good direction for my help.”
Then he learned about Sam Afroh.
Afroh, once a top-tier amateur tennis player
himself, had been paralyzed from the
neck down in a freak car accident during
the summer of 1991. That same year, by
coincidence, the UMass Lowell Computer
and Electrical Engineering Department
had begun work on a program—to be
known as assistive technology—designed to ease the lives of
handicapped persons through the creative use of technology. In
Afroh’s case, students in the program developed a system to
allow him to control most of the functions of his Lowell apartment—heat,
air conditioning, lights, TV—through simple verbal
commands. “It’s amazing,” the wheelchair-bound man
would tell this magazine later. “I feel like I have a part of my
life back. How can I ever thank them?”
For Roy Zuckerberg, this seemed an inspiration. “It just struck
me as a truly great program. To be able to make that sort of difference
in someone’s life simply by applying knowledge and
technology—it was a program I thought deserved all the support
it could get.”
His support was $250,000, (augmented by a 50 percent
matching grant from the UMass Foundation), which was
donated to the University in the fall of 1999. Proceeds from the
$375,000 total continue to generate about $19,000 a year for
the assistive technology program—and, though Sam Afroh
himself has since succumbed to his afflictions, to make the daily
lives of others like him that much less difficult to bear.
Roy Zuckerberg, though, has been an innovator nearly all
his life—beginning decades ago, when he broke ranks with his
father (“we had different philosophies about things”) and left
the family textile business to go to work for Goldman Sachs,
Roy Zuckerberg, center, with UMass President Jack Wilson, left, and UMass Lowell
Chancellor-select Marty Meehan.
from which he would retire 31 years later as vice chairman. So
it was probably inevitable that, sooner or later—for all the
importance of the causes he’d supported—he would look to
put his signature on something all his own.
That day came in late 2001, with the announcement of his
largest gift to date: an $850,000 pledge for the establishment
of the Roy J. Zuckerberg Endowed Leadership Chair. The first
UMass chair to be endowed at the Lowell campus, it offered a
yearly award of $60,000 ($35,000 to support teaching or
research, the remainder as a stipend) to “people of courage,
conviction and selflessness who have devoted their time and
talents to helping the University of Massachusetts accomplish
its goals.”
The key to the award, says its donor today, is its open-endedness.
While the chair itself is to be based on the Lowell campus,
any employee in the UMass system, either staff or faculty,
on any of the five campuses, is eligible to be considered.
“I’m trying to encourage leadership—wherever it may be
found. Any sort of positive leadership, coming from any
[UMass] campus. It could be a hockey coach at Lowell or a professor
from Amherst. As long as there’s real leadership shown,
they should be eligible for the chair.”(The first two yearly
awards, for 2005 and 2006, have gone to professors from UMass
Boston and the UMass Medical School.)
38 UMASS LOWELL MAGAZINE SPRING 2007