Of that purchase, about 2,000 acres will be developed into a campus with the remainder protected as an environmental preserve. The surrounding campus community will be built on privately owned land south of the golf course. The remaining $3 million from the Packard donation will go to set up the scholarship fund.

Originally the Virginia Smith Trust donated 2,000 acres northeast of Merced to UC on the condition that the university help develop the surrounding land into a campus community of housing and businesses. The profits from that development were to be used to fund scholarships.

Concerns over vernal pools containing endangered shrimp and the San Joaquin kit fox forced the university to shift plans for the campus core to the Merced Hills Golf Course, in a far corner of the donated land. That meant the surrounding development would be on private property and there would be no income stream to pay for the scholarships.