Wall Street Wizard David Tepper “learns it, earns it and returns it” With Record-breaking $55M Gift

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Tepper Takes B-School to the Big Leagues

According to one of his former students, Ken Dunn was always “ahead of his time” when he taught at the business school in the 1980s. Now, this former student wants to keep it that way. So he and his wife gave Carnegie Mellon the largest gift in its 104-year history—$55 million to the school of business, the second largest gift to any U.S. business school.

His name is David Tepper. That’s also the new name given to the Graduate School of Industrial Administration in recognition of the gift he and his wife, Marlene, gave to the business school that was originally founded by William Larimer Mellon in 1949.

Tepper says the gift will be used to make sure Carnegie Mellon continues to “teach things that aren’t in any textbook.” Dunn was doing just that when Tepper, now 46, was a graduate business student more than 20 years ago. Tepper says this was a very big reason he went on to build Appaloosa Management, a $3-billion hedge fund investment firm in Chatham, N.J.

“We say that our students make an impact in the world and we emphasize that with their ability to combine disciplines to solve problems and come up with new ideas, they make an impact more quickly than their peers,” said Carnegie Mellon University President Jared L. Cohon. “David epitomizes this kind of success. To receive this transformational gift from a recent graduate speaks to the competitive advantage our students possess.”

“The outstanding education I received at Carnegie Mellon gave me the ability to analyze investment options in such a unique way that I am still capitalizing on what I learned there to this day,” Tepper said. “I owe a lot to my former professor, Dean Ken Dunn, and the rest of the faculty.”

Tepper’s gift acknowledges more than five decades of landmark accomplishments in leading new approaches to management research and education. And it supports the business school’s initiatives to build upon its environment of academic rigor, excitement and discovery.

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