LARAMIE - Many years ago, a young Casper insurance agent named Bill Daniels first demonstrated a commitment to doing "the right thing."

When he learned that the underwriting company had gone out of business shortly before the death of a warehouse worker to whom he had sold one of the company's policies, Daniels paid the death benefit out of his own pocket.

Years later, long after debts associated with his Utah Stars professional basketball team had been discharged in bankruptcy, Daniels repaid the season ticket holders and vendors, with interest.

On Monday in Cheyenne, the Daniels Fund of Denver carried on its founder's emphasis on honesty and integrity in business by awarding $3 million to the University of Wyoming College of Business to establish the Bill Daniels Chair of Business Ethics. The grant, which will be matched by state funds appropriated by the Legislature, is the largest single private foundation contribution for an academic program in UW history, according to Business Dean Brent Hathaway.

The award comes on the heels of annual grants in 2005 and 2006 amounting to more than $3 million which brought visiting professors in business ethics to the UW campus. "This grant today will allow us to permanently endow that position," Hathaway said.

The Daniels Fund's CEO, Linda Childears, was in Cheyenne Monday where the Daniels Fund and the UW program were recognized in both chambers of the Legislature.

"We were thrilled with what UW has done with the first two grants, and the availability of the match from the state made this decision pretty irresistible," Childears said.

"The beauty of this award to the University of Wyoming is that it will go far beyond UW, engaging community college and high school students and the community, and involving the business world to make sure the examples used in the classrooms are timely and relevant to the real world," Childears said.

Daniels founded a cable TV company in Casper in 1953 and from that beginning built it into one of the nation's largest media companies, based in Denver. The Daniels Fund was established in 1997 and has made many donations to programs in various Rocky Mountain states.

Hathaway said the business ethics program will train students to recognize when a company or a supervisor is flirting on the edge of a gray area - and the business world has many gray areas. The students will learn how to address these elements of gray and put in checks and balances to avoid problems.

Childears said Daniels always understood that while making the right decision might hurt a company's reputation and bottom line in the short run, often it is beneficial in the long run.

"Our founder committed his life to ethical business behavior, and he directed his foundation to look for programs such as this one at the University of Wyoming," she said.