$52-Million Bequest Will Finance Education Fund; Other New Gifts

Four institutions have received big gifts:

• The Arizona Community Foundation, in Phoenix, has received a $52-million bequest from John Ellis to endow the Ellis Center for Educational Excellence, a supporting organization that will focus on improving public education in the state. Mr. Ellis, who died in July, was an heir to the Browning gun-manufacturing fortune.
• Harold C. Simmons, founder of Contran Corporation, a holding company in Dallas, and his wife, Annette, have donated $50-million to the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, in Dallas, to help pay for new programs in the Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center, which the couple helped create with a donation in 1988. The money will be used to recruit 30 new cancer specialists and pay for other programs at the cancer center. The couple have donated more than $64-million to the medical center over the last 17 years.
• Coe College, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, has received a $29.3-million bequest from K. Raymond Clark, who was an estate lawyer in Chicago and a member of the college’s Board of Trustees. The money will be used for endowment. Mr. Clark, who died in July, graduated from Coe in 1930.
• Andrew S. Grove, a founder and former chairman of Intel Corporation, in Santa Clara, Calif., has pledged $26-million to City College of New York to establish an endowment and pay for laboratory equipment and renovations, new programs, and research at the engineering school. Mr. Grove graduated from the college in 1960. City College has already received $5-million of the gift; Mr. Grove plans to pay the remaining $21-million over the next 20 years.

Other recent gifts:

Albright College (Reading, Pa.): $4.8-million from Margaret K. Schumo, a real-estate developer and owner of Spruce Lane Development Company, in Hamburg, Pa., to pay for a new fitness center.

City of Hope (Duarte, Calif.): $2.5-million from Ruth B. Lanman, of Orange County, Calif., to establish an endowed chair in gene regulation and drug discovery, and support research.

John Brown U. (Siloam Springs, Ark.): $5-million pledge from an anonymous donor to endow scholarships. The donor stipulated that the university must raise an additional $5-million in three years to match the pledge.

Pace U. (New York): $1.25-million pledge from Michael C. Koffler, president and chief executive officer of MetSchools, a company that operates seven private schools in New York. The money will be used to establish an endowed professorship in autism, and to help create the Center for Teaching and Research in Autism.

State U. of New York at Albany School of Business: $5-million pledge from Norman E. Snyder Jr., chief operating officer of Rheingold Brewing Company, in New York, to establish the Norman E. Snyder Jr. ’83 Endowment Fund. The money will help pay for facilities improvements, faculty recruitment, financial aid, and other initiatives.

Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests (Concord): Land valued at $2.1-million from Jon and Deborah Dawson, of Norwalk, Conn. The 515 acres of donated land is located in an area of southwestern New Hampshire and parts of Massachusetts that the organization has worked to protect from development. Mr. Dawson is chief executive officer of Dawson Herman Capital Management, in Southport, Conn.

U. of the Pacific (Stockton, Calif.): $2-million bequest from Dorothy Ketman, a former music teacher, to establish a scholarship fund. Ms. Ketman, who died in January, lived in Greenbrae, Calif. She graduated from the university in 1920.

Western Michigan U. (Kalamazoo): $4-million from Edwin E. and Mary U. Meader to establish a center that will preserve and enhance digital maps and aerial photography in order to advance research on geographical change. The gift is to honor her grandfather, W.E. Upjohn, who founded the Upjohn Company, a Kalamazoo pharmaceutical company that was bought by Pfizer. Mr. Meader is a former adjunct professor of geography at the university.