The gift from the North Carolina-based financial holding company will be used to attract and/or retain a faculty member who will teach core values and the moral foundations of free enterprise and capitalism and conduct and coordinate research in these areas.

USC President Andrew A. Sorensen thanked BB&T for its generosity.

"This gift will help the Moore School of Business continue to receive international recognition for its innovative program development and quality research," he said. "We are excited about the possibilities."

The gift also calls for a course for undergraduate and graduate students that will examine the ethical and moral foundations of capitalism and include the study of Atlas Shrugged, the 1957 novel by Ayn Rand.

A BB&T Speaker Series on Capitalism will be launched, and an Ayn Rand reading room will be included as part of the renovated Springs Library at the business school.

"We are grateful to BB&T for this very generous gift," said Joel A. Smith III, dean of the Moore School of Business. "This is an especially good time to begin teaching a dedicated course here at the Moore School on the ethical and moral foundations of capitalism, particularly in light of public disclosures of inappropriate business practices in the country during the past few years."

John Allison, chair and CEO of BB&T Corp., said, "As a mission-driven organization guided by our own clearly defined set of values, we're proud to make this donation to the University of South Carolina.

"At BB&T, we believe that ideas have a profound impact on human action. An individual's philosophy ultimately determines how he lives his life. As a business institution, we are particularly interested in the impact of ideas in the realm of economics and the free-market system. Our goal is to encourage an intellectual, objective, and rational analysis of capitalism from a moral perspective."

The gift is the second from BB&T to USC. In 1997, BB&T gave the Moore School $350,000. Half of the funds went to a scholarship endowment, and the other half went into an endowment to support faculty programs and research.

BB&T, headquartered in Winston-Salem, N.C., has more than 27,000 employees, $90 billion in assets and operates more than 1,350 banking offices in 11 states and Washington, D.C.

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