has made a $5 million gift to Los Angeles’ Occidental College that will establish the John Branca Institute for Music at the school, it was announced Tuesday ., associate professor of music at Occidental, will serve as inaugural director at the institute, a music teaching and learning facility based at the university.
It will additionally develop special programming and joint research activities in conjunction with the Harvard Negotiation Project based at Harvard Law School and directed by Harvard Business School professor“Occidental College has a diverse student body and provides the most personalized undergraduate education in Los Angeles,” said Branca, who graduated from the College cum laude and with honors as a political science major in 1972, in a statement.