JMU receives $2.5M gift for new library wing

James Madison University has received a $2.5 million gift for the new wing of its Carrier Library.

Alexandria residents Stan and Rosemary Jones provided the donation, which the Harrisonburg public university announced in late November. A 1954 physics and math alumnus of what was then Madison College, Stan worked for McLean-based Mitre as an engineer for five decades, specializing in antennae design and development. He holds a master’s degree from the University of Delaware. Rosemary is a retired associate real estate broker.

“We certainly care about libraries, and we both use our library here in Alexandria,” Rosemary Jones said in a Madison magazine feature.

The couple previously committed $1.3 million to JMU in 2019 for scholarships for first-generation Honors College students in the university’s College of Science and Mathematics and the College of Integrated Science and Engineering. In March 2019, Jones received JMU’s College of Science and Mathematics Alumni Achievement Award at the JMU Alumni Association awards banquet.

Bob Kolvoord, who is JMU’s interim provost and vice president for academic affairs, as well as the former dean of its College of Integrated Science and Engineering, met the Joneses around the time of their previous donation.

“Stan is, at his heart, a systems analyst and engineer,” he said in a Madison magazine feature. “And what I’ve observed is that both of them really have an eye toward the future and wanting to help provide opportunity for students.”

JMU began renovating and expanding the Carrier Library in summer 2023 and expects to reopen it for the fall 2026 semester. The university is renovating 138,224 square feet and building 56,887 square feet; the new Stan and Rosemary Jones Wing will be more than 56,000 square feet.

“I think it’s a really beautiful building,” Stan Jones said in a Madison magazine feature. “That was the first thing that caught my eye.”

The expanded library will have a makerspace, media production and digitization studios and an experimental tech classroom. It will also have an anatomy room, consultation and group study rooms, a lactation space, new facilities for Special Collections and a lab for book and manuscript conservation, a café, a student kitchenette and other new rooms and features.

Founded in 1908 as the State Normal and Industrial School for Women at Harrisonburg, JMU is a public research university with an R2 classification from the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education. In the fall semester, the university had 21,112 undergraduate and 1,767 graduate students enrolled.