As the COVID-19 pandemic began gripping the country, BU Trustee Emeritus Richard Shipley was struck by how quickly faculty across Boston University adopted an array of digital tools to transform their teaching.

Richard Shipley

That moment of recognition led to an $8 million gift from Shipley (Questrom’68,’72, Hon.’22) to advance the University’s efforts to expand digital learning, as outlined in our Strategic Plan. And in 2022, the Shipley Center for Digital Learning & Innovation began supporting faculty in creating digital content for in-person undergraduate and graduate courses.

The longtime BU trustee—and founder and former leader of a private equity firm investing in early expansion-state technology companies—points to the profound changes that digital innovation has wrought in the business world. “Why should academia be different?” he asks.

Shipley has previously funded several other University initiatives, including the Shipley Prostate Cancer Research Center, as well as endowing the Richard C. Shipley Professorship in Management and the Beverly A. Brown Professorship for the Improvement of Urban Health.

The new center will also fund major initiatives by departments, schools, and colleges to create digital content for residential students, and it will support innovation in digital learning by funding experiments in the application of new technologies.

“BU is very fortunate to have the kind of clairvoyant leadership that embraced digital learning prior to COVID,” Shipley says. “We really know how to execute in the digital space.”