A Midwestern university is renaming one of the oldest active college sports stadiums after a top fundster who is a longtime donor.

Kansas University chancellor Douglas Girod plans to brand the school's Memorial Stadium as the "David Booth-Kansas Memorial Stadium", in honor of Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA [profile]) co-founder and executive chairman David Booth, the Topeka Capital Journal reports. The Austin Statesman and the Lawrence Journal-World also covered the news.

The planned renaming comes two months after Booth revealed a record $50-million donation to KU as part of the school's $350-million "Raise the Chant" athletics fundraising campaign to renovate the stadiuam and other sports facilities. The stadium first opened 96 years ago in 1921 and was named to honor KU alumni who died in what is now known as World War I.

Booth is a native of KU's hometown, Lawrence, and he has both a bachelor's degree and a master's from the university. Girod says that Booth has "been a tremendous supporter for decades" for the university. Indeed, Booth's name is already on the "Booth Family Hall of Athletics" on the KU campus. And in 2010 Booth shelled out $4.3 million to buy James Naismith's 13 original rules of basketball, which he then sent to KU to put on display.

Booth is also famously a philanthropic alumnus of his other alma mater, the University of Chicago. In 2008 he donated $300 million to the university, which renamed its business school the "University of Chicago Booth School of Business." 

Edited by: Neil Anderson, Managing Editor


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