Robert I. Toll, head of the nation's leading luxury home builder and a longtime advocate of providing educational opportunities to students in need, has made a major gift to expand the Albert and Sylvia Toll Scholarship Fund at the Law School. The gift should triple the number of students who will receive scholarships from the fund every year.

Currently, approximately five students per year benefit from the scholarship. With Mr. Toll's new gift, 15 students will receive annual financial help from the fund, according to Ernest Gonsalves, associate dean, Business Affairs. "I believe that anyone who wants to go, and gets in, should not have to struggle to both pay for and succeed at the Law School," said Mr. Toll, chairman and CEO of Toll Brothers, Inc. in Huntingdon Valley, PA. "I believe a scholarship should be provided for anyone and everyone who has a need."

Mr. Toll, L '66, established the scholarship fund in 1991 in honor of his parents and his father's love of the law. His father, Albert, was a well-known area developer with a history of philanthropy who helped his sons, Robert and Bruce, start Toll Brothers. Nearly 40 students have received scholarships from the fund thus far.

"We are grateful to Robert Toll for his generous contribution," said Dean Michael A. Fitts. "More important, I'm sure the students who will benefit from this newly enriched scholarship fund are grateful as well, for they can now obtain first-class legal training without incurring a heavier financial burden."

Mr. Toll and his wife, Jane, have long been staunch supporters of education. In 1990 the Tolls joined the Say Yes to Education program at GSE. Say Yes to Education is an academic intervention program that seeks to cultivate interest in higher education among young and at-risk inner city students. The Tolls guaranteed the cost of college or technical school tuition for 58 third graders at the Harrity Elementary School in West Philadelphia--as long as they graduated from high school. Thirty-two of the children went to college.

A member of the School's Board of Overseers, Mr. Toll also serves on the board of directors of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Chapter of the American Red Cross, Cornell's Real Estate School, Seeds of Peace, Abington Hospital, and Beth Shalom Synagogue.