KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) - Henry Bloch, a co-founder of the tax preparation company H&R Block, has donated $32 million to the University of Missouri-Kansas City's business school, the largest outright gift in the university's history, university officials said.
The money will go toward a business school addition, which will be called the Henry W. Bloch Executive Hall for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. It is scheduled to open in fall 2013, The Kansas City Star reported (http://bit.ly/qqmusjhttp://bit.ly/qqmusj ).
"We are extremely grateful to Henry Bloch for his years of support of the Bloch School of Management," Chancellor Leo E. Morton said Thursday night before a packed auditorium at the university's Student Union.
"Henry had a vision when he endowed this school that one day it would lead among the nation's best. Today we are seeing what Henry saw," he said.
The donation coincides with the announcement that the Princeton Review has ranked UMKC's undergraduate and graduate business programs 14th and 21st, respectively, among business programs nationwide this year.
Gov. Jay Nixon called the new addition to the business school "a virtual link between Missouri's legacy of entrepreneurship and UMKC."