RICHLAND TWP — Chatham University’s Eden Hall Campus is receiving a $15 million gift from the disbanding Falk Foundation, boosting construction efforts at the fledgling campus and helping expand the university’s School of Sustainability.

The donation will allow the university to establish the Falk Sustainability Endowment to support academic programs in the School of Sustainability & the Environment and to help pay for building at the 388-acre Eden Hall campus in Richland Township.

Chatham touts its Eden Hall campus as “the first community in the world built from ‘below the ground up’ for the study of sustainable living, learning, and development.”

The school plans to use solar and geothermal energy, and natural gas fuel cell technology to power, heat and cool buildings on the new campus. The first phase of construction is scheduled to be done this fall, and the campus should be in full use by fall 2014. Once construction is completed, the campus will be designed to be zero emissions, producing more energy than it consumes, and all storm and wastewater will be managed on-site. The three-phase construction project, to continue over the next several years, will cost about $90 million.

An estimated 1,500 students will be at the campus daily.

Because of the gift, the Chatham is renaming the School of Sustainability as the Falk School of Sustainability. The $15 million is the largest donation the university has received in its 144-year history.