With technology companies’ stock turning for the worse in recent months, NIU acted fast to preserve its funding for $20 million Barsema Hall.

The new College of Business building, a gift from NIU alumnus Dennis Barsema and his wife Stacey last August, is funded entirely in stock dividends from Redback Networks, an Internet technology start-up firm.

“NIU immediately sold the Redback stocks off when the transaction took place last year,” said Mallory Simpson, NIU associate vice president for development.

The $20 million donation — the largest in NIU history — came just before the stock market downturn, and was announced publicly in mid-September. Barsema, a 1977 NIU graduate in management, was the previous president and CEO of Redback Networks and is the current Redback board vice chairman. In 1999, he helped lead Redback to the fifth most successful initial public offering in Wall Street history.

But stock prices for companies like Redback have been hammered during the past five months.

According to the Wall Street Journal’s Web site, Redback stock was at a 52-week high of $181 about the same time Barsema made his donation. Last Friday, the stock closed at $12.83 a share — a difference of $168 and a 93-percent plunge.

If NIU hadn’t cashed the stock last summer, the 120,000 shares donated by Barsema would be worth only about $1.5 million today — a mere drop in the $20 million bucket. Instead, NIU got full value.

Simpson said the fast action was standard procedure.

“It is consistent with our policy to sell stocks right away due to the constant volatility of the stock market,” she said.

Barsema Hall will begin taking shape by this fall. In addition to their stock gift, the Barsemas made a cash donation to establish the Dennis and Stacey Barsema Endowed Scholarship in Business. That award will cover full tuition and books for business majors who show academic success or financial need.

Another cash gift went to the Business Information Technology Transfer Center, which will let teams of OMIS students work on projects for major corporations, including Motorola, Follet Higher Education Group and Wallace Computer Services.

Assistant economics professor Carl Campbell said the U.S. economy has slowed to a period of minimal growth, but the stock market should balance out in the long run.

Company stock prices — especially those of technology companies — have suffered dramatically because of poor profit margins and stockholders’ uncertainty about the market, Campbell said.

“Nobody could have really predicted the decline in the stock market and the dip in the economy before it occurred last year,” he said.