Three Education Institutions Get Multimillion-Dollar Gifts

Three higher-education institutions have received gifts of $100-million or more:

• Peter B. Lewis, chairman of the Progressive Corporation, in Cleveland, has pledged $101-million to Princeton University, in New Jersey, for a large-scale, multifaceted arts program.
• Baylor College of Medicine, in Houston, has won $100-million from Dan L. Duncan, founder and chairman of Enterprise Products, an energy company in Houston.

• The money will pay for research, recruitment of new researchers and faculty members, and programs to treat patients and educate doctors at Baylor’s cancer center.

• An anonymous donor has pledged $100-million to the Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, for its capital campaign. The donor earmarked the money to support programs in the humanities, medicine, and public health.

The university said the gift means that the institution has now exceeded its goal to raise $2-billion in a capital campaign it announced in 2002.

However, the university said it would continue the drive through its planned end date of December 2007.

Mr. Lewis has long been a benefactor to Princeton and to arts organizations.

All told, the automobile-insurance executive, who graduated from Princeton in 1955, has given a total of $220-million to his alma mater.

His new gift eclipses by $1-million what had been the largest donation made to Princeton, and Mr. Lewis has already paid a significant portion of the pledge, university officials say.

In recent years, Mr. Lewis has also contributed $60-million for a science library designed by the architect Frank Gehry and $35-million for a genomics institute.

Mr. Lewis’s gift will create the Center for the Creative and Performing Arts and a fellowship program for artists-in-residence.

The money will also be used to expand performance, exhibition, and practice spaces, as well as support for the arts faculty, student arts groups, and existing arts programs.

Mr. Lewis has made other multimillion-dollar gifts to arts institutions, most notably $77-million to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Foundation.

Last year, however, he resigned as chairman of the Guggenheim’s board in a dispute with the institution’s leader and other trustees.

Baylor’s donation is also from a trustee.

Mr. Duncan, who successfully fought a bout with prostate cancer, lost both his father and his first wife to cancer.

Mr. Duncan has been a longtime supporter of Baylor. In the past two years he has donated $35-million to establish an adult ambulatory-care facility and $2-million to support prostate-cancer research.

Mr. Duncan’s gift is one of the largest ever made to a medical school, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.

In 2002 the University of California at Los Angeles received $200-million for its medical school.

The same year, two medical schools each received $100-million: Cornell University’s Weill Medical College and Case Western Reserve University’s Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine.