Committed to Student Health, Wellness, and Community
Gina and Tom Russo support a residential life vision that will improve students’ well-being and enrich their Dartmouth experience—and they encourage others to join them.
Georgina and Thomas Russo, members of the Class of 1977, had markedly different residence hall experiences as undergraduates. Gina lived in North Fayerweather for two years, and then moved to Lord, where, Tom recalls, “she had a full one-bedroom suite with a fireplace.” Tom’s first room, on the other hand, was in the River Cluster. “At least a third of my time was dedicated to cajoling the director of residential housing to let me move back to campus, because I was all the way down by Tuck,” he says. Gina adds, “He developed his negotiating skills, so I would say it was a useful experience.”
Dartmouth’s West End is one of the most vibrant parts of campus today, and the College is planning to transform West Wheelock Street, which links the West End to the Green, into a hub of student life. And those negotiating skills that Tom refined as an undergraduate? They may have helped him become portfolio manager and partner at the investment firm Gardner Russo & Quinn LLC.
Tom and Gina, a former assistant vice president at Wells Fargo, are keen to ensure all Dartmouth undergraduates live in welcoming, high-quality housing. They have committed $30 million, the largest gift for undergraduate housing in Dartmouth’s history, to a new residence hall at 25 West Wheelock. This building will be the first of several projects envisioned for West Wheelock Street to help fulfill President Sian Leah Beilock’s pledge to add a combined 1,000 beds for students, faculty, and staff in the next 10 years. The Georgina T. Russo ’77 and Thomas A. Russo ’77 Hall—Russo Hall—will offer apartment-style housing for up to 285 juniors and seniors when it opens in the fall of 2026.
Why a gift for undergraduate housing now?
Tom: When we saw the opportunity to help reset residential living at Dartmouth for generations to come, we were immediately interested in participating. Residential living is among President Beilock’s highest priorities. We wanted to get behind the project at the earliest possible moment. We invite others to come along. We share Sian’s vision for getting undergraduate life back into the center of the campus. The vision is one of health and wellness as expressed through residential living advancements that will build community.
With great foresight, the Board of Trustees created a new and sustainable funding source, a special reserve for infrastructure renewal, to ensure residential living at Dartmouth remains as world-class as the rest of campus. The reserve would accumulate until it had enough heft to make something impactful and special. That time is now. It is extraordinarily unusual to have such naming opportunities at this amount. Our availability of funding is a function of the wise moves by the board over the past three years to create a residential housing war chest.
What about the president’s vision for new housing excites you?
Gina: One of the best things about it is having a new entrance to the campus coming across the river. Right now, there are just some nondescript houses, and you don’t really have a feeling that you’ve entered into Dartmouth. This will definitely make everyone aware that they’re on campus.
Why is having new residence halls near the center of campus important to you?
Tom: Much of the off-campus housing stock is increasingly run-down. Students would argue they don’t mind, but the conditions have deteriorated. Students can choose to live further from campus and drive into Hanover, in which case you’re sort of balkanizing the campus experience. It’s the right thing to offer students more on-campus choices. We believe students will find the opportunity to live close to the center of campus and have residence halls with kitchens, private study rooms, social spaces both large and small, and other amenities to be quite alluring.
Do you like the apartment-style housing planned for Russo Hall?
Gina: It’s a good idea. It will offer a transitional phase between being in a typical dorm and going into the outside world where you have your own apartment, and it will give older students the chance to choose with whom they live, including students from other house communities. What is more important to student health and well-being than where they live and with whom they live? We are also excited about the variety of spaces in the new residence halls. There’s a lot of common space. Russo Hall will have a reading room for quiet study, and then there’s an entire floor downstairs with social space. And within each of the units there is a living area and kitchen. This mix of spaces for social interaction and privacy benefits the well-being of individual students and the community as a whole.
Russo Hall is going to be built to a high standard, so generations of students will know this building. What does that mean to you?
Tom: It’s awesome. It will be an absolute honor for donors to have a chance to participate in shaping the life of students over decades. I always marveled when we were at Dartmouth: Who was Bissell? Who was Robinson? Who were these people? It has also inspired us to work with the project’s builder and architect, to make sure that the decisions we’re making now increase the chances that this building in 100 years will continue delivering shelter for a still-fabulous college.
Could you have imagined this 50 years ago?
Gina: If someone had told us in the 1970s that our names would be on a dorm one day, we would never have believed it.
You have supported Dartmouth in many ways: an endowed professorship, the Hood Museum of Art renovation, the Tribal Service and Solutions Program, and multiple gifts to the Dickey Center. What inspires you to give again and again?
Gina and Tom: We loved our time here, and we are always mindful when we come back and talk to people—learning about the new things that are happening. Dartmouth is on the forefront of so much exploration in so many fields. We get excited by the prospect of 25 West Wheelock, Russo Hall, joining the illustrious heritage, art, and architecture of Dartmouth’s portfolio of student living options.
Gina Russo ’77 and Tom Russo ’77 along with Senior Vice President Josh Keniston and Dartmouth President Sian Leah Beilock at the Aug. 27 groundbreaking at 25 West Wheelock Street. (Photo by Kata Sasvari)