During a time when federal research dollars have been dwindling, another multi-million dollar donation to University of Wisconsin will help fund research for the School of Education and Center for Investigating Healthy Minds.

UW alumni, Dorothy and Robert King, recently donated $10 million to help the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds and School of Education hire new faculty to help focus their research on children’s well-being.

As federal research funds have been becoming smaller and smaller, this donation comes at a critical time to help ongoing expansion of research at the center, Center for Investigating Healthy Minds spokesperson Marianne Spoon said.

The center’s mission is to cultivate well-being through scientific understanding, and a donation like this will allow the center to accomplish its mission, Spoon said.

The additional faculty members will allow for the center to study well-being from multiple vantage points including neuroscience, education and psychology and how these practices lay out in communities and families, Spoon said.

“We’re looking to begin developing assessments to tell of how whether or not an intervention is successful or not for certain population or kids,” Spoon said.

While this donation came at a particular time of funding decreases, according to UW Foundation spokesperson Vincent Sweeney, donations like these are always important for the university.

With budget cuts having a major impact on the university, the university has seen an influx of donations, but these are not the only times that giving to the university is important, Sweeney said.

“I think giving to the university is crucial at any time,” Sweeney said. “Over the 167 years of the university’s existence, private funds have always played an important role for people paying tuition and research funds.”

The university has several large donations, including the Morgridge Match donation which raised $250 million in funding toward UW.

$250 million donation to UW will go to research, faculty support

The university has already reaped benefits from donations like the Moridges’; some have allowed the university to create faculty chairs and some have added to student financial aid funds, Sweeney said.