Alumni Jessie and Charles Cale give $15 million for residential college

USC Trustee Charles Cale ’66 and his wife, Jessie Cale ’74, have pledged $15 million to endow and name a residential college at USC Village. The Jessie and Charles Cale Residential College will integrate living and learning for as many as 320 students when the USC Village opens in Fall 2017.

Contact: USC Media Relations at uscnews@usc.edu or (213) 740-2215

One of eight residential colleges planned for USC Village, Cale College will enable students to get to know faculty outside the classroom—supporting one another and participating in enriching academic, cultural and recreational activities.

“As alumni, lifelong supporters and Trojan parents, Charles and Jessie Cale demonstrate their enduring passion for the university and their heartfelt desire to build an exceptional environment for future students to live and learn,” said USC President C. L. Max Nikias. “Their generosity will expand the horizons of our talented students by immersing them in the active intellectual and social life of the university. We are immensely grateful for their gift.”

USC Village is the largest development project in the history of the university and South Los Angeles. Located directly north of the University Park Campus, the 1.25-million-square-foot USC Village will enhance campus life for students while offering an array of new retail and service options for the local community. Collectively, USC Village will add as many as 2,700 student beds to the University Park campus and increase the number of students living in USC-owned housing by nearly 40 percent.

Cale, the managing member of investment firm Griffin Opportunities LLC, served as group vice president of sports for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee. He also held positions as the assistant chef de mission of the U.S. Olympic team at the 1988 Seoul Games, director of the delegation for the U.S. Olympic team at the 1992 Barcelona Games, co-chairman and chief executive officer of World Cup USA 1994 and special assistant and member of the board of directors of the U.S. Olympic Committee. He received the Gold Medal of Youth and Sports from the French government in 1984.

He has been a steadfast supporter of academic and research priorities across the university as well as USC Athletics, where he and his wife endowed the Charles Griffin Cale Director of Athletics’ Chair in 2011. He is a former member of the USC President’s Leadership Council and a longtime member of the USC Associates.

He earned a master’s degree from the USC Gould School of Law after from obtaining an LL.B. (Bachelor of Law) from Stanford Law School. Early in his career, he practiced law in Los Angeles with the firms Adams, Duque and Hazeltine; and Morgan, Lewis and Bockius. He served as a member of the board of directors of Nike Inc. and Century 21 Realty of Canada, and was a founding board member of the Women of Troy.

Jessie Cale earned a bachelor’s degree from the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Their three children, Walter, Elizabeth and Whitney, attended USC. Walter earned his MBA in 2012 from the USC Marshall School of Business and Elizabeth her bachelor’s in neuroscience at USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences in 2008. Whitney graduated from Cornell University and earned a law degree from Washington University.