Student housing provider makes $1M commitment to UCSB Athletics
Tropicana Student Living, which operates dormitory-style student housing in Isla Vista, is donating $1 million to UC Santa Barbara’s athletics program over the next decade.
The housing provider said it is giving $100,000 to UC Athletics for the 2013-14 year, with plans to donate that same amount every year until the $1 million-mark is reached.
“We have long appreciated the enormous effort that UCSB Athletics’ coaches and players have done to excel at their sport and reach out to our UCSB students as well as the youth in the local Santa Barbara community,” Kent Dunn, managing principal of Tropicana Student Living, said in a statement.
The Tropicana gift is being made through the Gaucho Fund and is part of The Campaign for UC Santa Barbara, a campus-wide fundraising effort that hopes to raise $1 billion in funding for university students, faculty, staff and programs.
UCSB Athletics has raised more than $2.2 million this year, with money going immediately toward the baseball program and subsequently to all of the athletics department’s 20 intercollegiate programs.
UCSB student-athletes hold the second highest NCAA graduation success rate in the University of California system, at 85 percent. The university’s 450 student-athletes compete in 20 NCAA Division I sports.
