Vanderbilt University now has raised $400 million for a West Palm Beach graduate school campus as it nears a $520 million goal for the downtown complex.
The new fundraising level comes as the private, Nashville-based university has hired Natasha Sachs, a technology and academic expert, to lead the West Palm Beach campus.
Sachs is Vanderbilt's new assistant vice chancellor and executive director of Vanderbilt West Palm Beach.
In an exclusive interview on Oct. 7, Sachs said she will be Vanderbilt's on-the-ground leader in Palm Beach County. She said she will meet with community leaders and local employers to help determine the university's curriculum and learn what kinds of jobs businesses need to fill.
"We want to build ties with the community so
the program reflects the region's needs," Sachs said.
Vanderbilt will build its campus in a section of downtown known as Government Hill. The campus, totaling slightly more than 8 acres, will stretch between South Tamarind and Sapodilla avenues, from Datura Street south to Fern Street.
Backers of the Vanderbilt project say having a top university in the city's midst is critical to West Palm Beach's advancement into a major destination for companies, residents and new investment.
Sachs, a native of Palm Beach County, has held positions with Google in the United States and Europe, working with corporate clients. She also was a senior leader at Coursera, an online higher-education technology company that works with top U.S. universities, including Vanderbilt.
Vanderbilt ranks No. 16 in 2027 U.S. News & World Report's Best National Universities list. Vanderbilt University’s School of Engineering is ranked No. 39, in a tie, out of 194 in Best Engineering Schools for graduate programs.
Construction on the Vanderbilt West Palm Beach campus is slated to start in mid-2027, with the goal of opening to students in the fall of 2029. The campus is expected to host 1,000 students.
Vanderbilt leader to raise profile of growing university
Vanderbilt's financial and leadership advances come as national attention increasingly focuses on South Florida as a business and research hub.
On Sept. 30, Carnegie-Mellon University announced it will create a Miami campus for undergraduate, graduate and doctoral students. The planned 3,500-student campus is being built as part of a $3 billion donation to the Pittsburgh university by financier Ken Griffin. The donation is the largest private donation to a university in U.S. history.
"It's very good news for the whole region, and it confirms what Vanderbilt saw when it committed to West Palm Beach, which is the opportunity here," Sachs said.
The South Florida region consists of Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties.
And far from being competitive, Sachs added, having both Vanderbilt and Carnegie Mellon in the same area helps foster greater growth of technology and innovation.
"It's never one university," Sachs said. "It's many institutions all close together, doing something different, with employers right next door."
Vanderbilt's fast sprint to a West Palm campus
Vanderbilt University has moved quickly with its West Palm Beach campus planning.
The plan first was revealed in March 2024, when the university said it needed to raise $520 million to build the campus. Some $300 million was needed in the first phase for construction, Vanderbilt said.
By January, Vanderbilt said it had reached its construction fundraising goal and was moving on to the next phase: $250 million for academic programs and faculty.
Local stakeholders are major campus backers.
West Palm Beach real estate developer Stephen Ross already has publicly pledged $50 million for the campus. Ross, a Palm Beach resident, is the owner of the NFL's Miami Dolphins football team and West Palm Beach’s dominant developer.
Donations also include a $5 million contribution from Cody Crowell, a principal with Easton Street Capital in Palm Beach and a graduate of Vanderbilt.
In addition, Palm Beach real estate developer and investorJeff Greene and his wife, Mei Sze, contributed about 1.3 acres adjacent to the campus, which previously had received 7 acres in donations from Palm Beach County and the city of West Palm Beach. Greene's land helps square off the campus and brings it to about 8.3 acres.
What programs will Vanderbilt, Carnegie Mellon offer?
There is some overlap in curriculums outlined by Vanderbilt and Carnegie Mellon.
Vanderbilt's West Palm Beach campus will blend technology, finance and engineering. Graduate programs will include finance, management, engineering space technology, and defense technology and manufacturing. Artificial intelligence and data science will be integrated throughout the curriculums.
In a January interview, Vanderbilt Chancellor Daniel Diermeier said the university wanted to include degrees in engineering linked to the space and defense industry, a surging area of growth along Florida's East Coast.
The Carnegie Mellon University in Miami will focus on health and biological discovery, national security and strategic capabilities, and energy and climate resilience.
Details of the Vanderbilt campus
Plans are for Vanderbilt to build a lush "campus in an arboretum" in downtown West Palm Beach.
In planning documents submitted to the city in July, the private university said its graduate business school campus would eventually include seven buildings enveloped by mature trees and connected by walking paths. The school estimates it will take at least a decade to build out the entire campus.
The first phase of construction will include a single building on the 800 block of Datura Street, two surface parking lots and a campus "quad" just to the south, the planning documents show.
Vanderbilt's representatives have had preliminary discussions with city planning administrators, but they have not yet submitted an official application to develop the property. The plans still require city approval.
Vanderbilt starts hiring academic leaders
In addition to Sachs, Vanderbilt already has hired two academic positions.
Christopher Scolese, a former director of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, will leader Vanderbilt's new Institute for Innovations Beyond Earth. The program will foster research and engineering related to near-Earth and space technology, including at the West Palm Beach campus.
In addition, Pratim Biswas, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, will serve as executive director of the Institute for Engineering Innovation at the West Palm Beach campus.
Biswas previously served as dean of the University of Miami's College of Engineering.
Alexandra Clough is a business writer at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at aclough@pbpost.com. X: @acloughpbp. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Vanderbilt hits $400 million for West Palm campus | Exclusive
