Professor Rausser made a transformational $50 million gift to the College of Natural Resources. The college has been renamed as the Rausser College of Natural Resources in his honor. The donation represents the largest gift ever received by the college and the largest naming gift of any academic unit at UC Berkeley.
The gift supports the college’s land-grant mission to address critical challenges including climate change mitigation and adaptation, clean energy transition, and food security. Rausser emphasized that the combination of world-class economists and scientists at the college uniquely positions it to provide both fundamental science and practical solutions for environmental risks facing California and the nation.
The majority of funds will create an unrestricted endowment directed by the dean in consultation with faculty leadership, supporting needs across the college’s five departments from graduate student support to interdisciplinary research programs. Additional portions will establish the Gordon Rausser Endowed Chair in Agricultural and Resource Economics and create the Rausser-Zilberman Program Endowed Fund for the Master of Development Practice Program.
Rausser joined Berkeley’s faculty in 1978 and served as department chair three times before becoming dean in 1994. As dean, he expanded the college by approximately 20% in faculty size, dramatically grew its philanthropic activity by creating eight new endowed chairs, and spearheaded the groundbreaking Berkeley-Novartis Agreement, which established a model for future public-private partnerships. Beyond Berkeley, he served as senior economist on the President’s Council of Economic Advisors under Ronald Reagan and chief economist of the U.S. Agency for International Development, while also co-founding successful consulting firms including OnPoint Analytics.