How A Prof’s Joke & A Dean’s Scholarship Led To A $25 Million Naming Gift

Forty years ago, a twenty-something Steven Wymer vividly recalls walking toward the business school at the University of Illinois with his auditing professor, Richard Ziegler, when Ziegler facetiously joked that some day his student could have a building named after him.

“Steve,” quipped Ziegler, “if you give the school a million dollars, you could put your name on one of these buildings.”

“It put the idea in my head,” recalls Wymer, who graduated with an accounting degree in 1985 and has been a highly successful portfolio manager in the equity and high income division at Fidelity Investments in Boston. “But that deal expired long ago.”

GIES COLLEGE RAISED OVER $50 MILLION FROM MORE THAN 150 DONORS FOR WYMER HALL

Indeed. After announcing a $25 million naming gift two years ago, Wymer returned to campus yesterday (Oct.10) to cut the ribbon for the dedication of a new 100,000-square-foot building at the Gies College of Business that bears his name. That generous gift turned out to be contagious. All told, Gies raised more than $50 million from more than 150 donors for Steven S. Wymer Hall, while the university itself kicked in another $40 million to make it a reality.

Wymer Hall, the first new building for Gies College since 2008, adds much needed capacity for a school that enrolled a record number of business undergraduates this year: 787 freshmen, up from 661 a year earlier.

The building boasts six new flexible classrooms, a 200-seat auditorium, two television network quality sound stages and five studios for its growing online learning initiative, 18 meeting rooms in support of experiential learning and collaborative work, as well as 84 office spaces for faculty and staff.

While the late Ziegler, who passed away four years ago, may have planted the seed, it was the generosity of then business school Dean Vernon Zimmerman, who may have ultimately made the difference. Wymer, who paid for his own education, asked Zimmerman for a scholarship during his sophomore year, leveraging his outstanding grades in the school’s accountancy program. Zimmerman obliged with what Ziegler says was “a personal scholarship” that helped to pay most of the $1,250 a year in tuition and fees for the remainder of the program.

READING STOCK TABLES WITH HIS DAD AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE

The school’s investment in the young student has clearly provided an ROI that would make any investor envious. At the dedication, Wymer, sporting a blue blazer, jeans and tennis shoes, noted that it was never his intention to get his name on a building but rather to give back to the school and its students that meant so much to his early beginnings.

He majored in accounting, believing that the discipline would provide him with “the language of business.” After graduating, he joined Deloitte Haskins & Sells in its Dallas office to work as a small business consultant in auditing and tax. After a couple of years, Wymer enrolled in the MBA program at the University of Chicago in the hopes of paving a path toward his true passion: investing.

It was an interest fueled at an early age during breakfast sit-downs with his father, a middle manager at an iron foundry for General Motors. The two of them would religiously read the business pages of the Chicago Tribune, with a particular interest in the stock tables. His parents bought him his first stock, ten shares in Marriott Corp., on his tenth birthday (he sold the shares to help foot the tuition bills for his undergraduate degree). Wymer quickly became a loyal fan of Peter Lynch, the legendary manager of the Magellan Fund at Fidelity Investments, who he would avidly watch on Louis Rukeyser’s Wall Street Week.

Armed with his Chicago MBA, Wymer made a classic career switch, joining Fidelity Investments in Boston as an analyst. That was 36 years ago in 1989. He not only met his idol Lynch at Fidelity, he gained a speedy promotion to take on the role of a fund manager in 1990. Now the second longest acting portfolio manager at Fidelity, he has managed the firm’s Growth Company Fund and related funds since 1997.

‘HONORED TO BE ABLE TO GIVE BACK’

After Larry Gies made his massive $150 million naming gift to the business school in 2017, Wymer says he was inspired to give back. He had been a senior at the school when Gies was a freshman. Gies thought of Wymer as a mentor, and both students were members of Beta Alpha Psi, a professional business fraternity, where Wymer rose to the position of president. At first, Wymer, who had long supported the university’s golf team, anonymously made a couple of $1 million donations in support of faculty research at Gies during the pandemic. But he wanted to do something more substantial when the chance to fund a new building for the business school occurred more than two years ago.

“My experience there opened a lot of doors for me,” he says, “and I’m honored to able to give back in this way.”

Initially, Wymer was reluctant to have his name put on a building. A humble and unassuming man, he is not accustomed to being in the public eye and did not relish the thought of being so openly recognized for his big pledge. Gies, who recently gave an additional $100 million naming gift for the university’s stadium, helped to convince him it was a good idea because it would likely encourage others to give as well. “I’m still processing this,” concedes Wymer at the dedication where he received a standing ovation when introduced. “But I became convinced it would be an example for other people to step forward.”

‘I TOLD HIM HIS NAME WOULD BRING OTHERS ALONG’

Gies remembers having a conversation with Wymer about it. “He wanted to know why I put my name on the school,” says Gies, who also was at first against the idea. “I told him his name would bring others along.  And the college got a lot more cash coming through the doors after he did it.”

Many of Wymer’s friends showed up to celebrate the dedication. Mike Cross, the head coach for the university’s golf team, recalls playing golf with Wymer as a youngster in Danville, Ill. when he was all of 13 years old and Wymer was 16. “He solid,” says Cross. “And that’s the biggest compliment I can pay anyone. He knows who he is. He’s straight-forward, optimistic, generous, and a definite leader.”

Gies agrees. “He was wise beyond his years, disciplined and focused,” remembers Gies. “I would go down and sit in his room and ask how I should think about this or that. He was very thoughtful. He’s not someone who will get up and give a 20-minute speech, but he can say in two minutes what it would take me in 20.”

‘WHERE PURPOSE MEETS THE ROAD’

It was former Dean Jeff Brown who got the building project rolling. Brown spent the last two years of his deanship raising money for Wymer Hall and overseeing many of the building’s details. Crews broke ground on the building in April of 2023, and students began taking classes in the building in August. Because students from across campus will also use some of the classroom space, Wymer Hall will allow business students to collide with students from many other disciplines.

Dean Brooke Elliott, who succeeded Brown and has now been in the job for the past year and three months, enthusiastically presided over the dedication. “This is where purpose meets the road,” she said, echoing the school’s Business On Purpose motto. “Every single corner is designed to spark discovery and growth. We want our students to build community there.”

Wymer Hall will allow her to expand access to an undergraduate business program that now turns away the vast majority of its applicants. ”

“We turn away thousands of students each year at the undergraduate level who would be successful at Gies and that I would be proud to have as alums,” she says. “In many cases, these are learners who would have been from families that would have been the fourth generation of students at Illinois. We serve 3,200 students now, but I would love to serve 4,000 undergraduate students at Gies. Wymer Hall gives us the classroom capacity to do it.”

DON’T MISS: FIVE YEARS & $150 MILLION LATER, WHAT A MEGA-BUSINESS SCHOOL GIFT CAN DO or ILLINOIS NAMES FIRST FEMALE DEAN FOR GIES COLLEGE OF BUSINESS 

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