U. of Va. Gets Land Worth $45-Million; Other Gifts

John W. Kluge, a telecommunications and media executive, has given the University of Virginia real estate worth $45-million in Albemarle County, Va.

The donation includes 7,378 acres of land, including 10 working farms. Mr. Kluge, the chairman of Metromedia Company, will retain use of a portion of the estate throughout his lifetime.

Other nonprofit groups have also received big gifts:

Academy of Vocal Arts (Philadelphia): $7-million bequest from Adele Warden Paxson, whose mother, Helen Corning Warden, founded the school, for endowment and renovations.

Belmont U. (Nashville): $9-million from Sally Beaman, whose late husband, Alvin G. Beaman, founded the Beaman Pepsi Cola Bottling Company, a car dealership, and several Tennessee radio and television stations, to help build a student center, expected to be completed in 2003.

Berklee College of Music (Boston): $1-million from J. Scott Benson, chairman of XOFF Records and founder of Microsystems International, to create the Gary Burton Chair in Jazz Performance, named after an alumnus who is now an executive vice president at the college.

Bowdoin College (Brunswick, Me.): $1.5-million from an anonymous donor to establish a professorship in the social sciences, which will be named for A. Myrick Freeman, a former professor at the college.

Colorado State U. (Fort Collins): $1.5-million from Joseph Phelps, former chairman of Hensel Phelps Construction Co., in Greeley, Colo., to establish a professorship in construction management.

DePaul U. (Chicago): $5-million pledge from Harrison I. Steans, of Bannockburn, Ill., owner of Financial Investments Corporation, in Chicago, for the university’s program to integrate community service with academic programs.

Drew U. (Madison, N.J.): $1.5-million from Nancy Priest, of Westfield, N.J., a university trustee, to build the rotunda and the entrance to a new arts center; and $1-million from George L. Shinn, of Morristown, N.J., a former chairman of the First Boston Corporation, to support graduate programs in art and literature.

Elmhurst College (Ill.): $2.7-million bequest from Gladys and Ray Robinson, for the A.C. Buehler Library.

Franklin & Marshall College (Lancaster, Pa.): $1-million from Nancy C. Floyd, of Sunriver, Ore., co-founder of Nth Power Technologies, a venture-capital company in San Francisco, to support the college’s center for public-policy analysis, which has been renamed for Ms. Floyd.

Georgetown U. (Washington): $1-million from Gerald E. Egan, chairman of Rodamco North America, a Dutch real-estate company, to establish a scholarship for Dutch students at the business school.

Idaho State U. (Pocatello): $5-million from Michael C. Ruettgers, executive chairman of the EMC Corporation, an information-storage company in Hopkinton, Mass., and a 1964 graduate of the university, for unrestricted use by the business college.

Michigan State U. (East Lansing, Mich.): $8-million pledge from an anonymous donor to support an executive-development center, which will be named for James B. Henry, who served as the dean of the business school and graduate school of management until last year.

Muhlenberg College (Allentown, Pa.): $5-million pledge from Edward H. Robertson, of Winter Park, Fla., a retired partner of PriceWaterhouse, and his wife, Lois, to help build two residence halls.

Otterbein College (Westerville, Ohio): unrestricted $6.3-million bequest from Mary Burnham Thomas, a 1928 graduate of the college who died in 1999.

Pennsylvania State U. (University Park): $2-million from William E. Leonhard, retired chairman of Parsons Corporation, a construction and engineering company in Pasadena, Calif., and his wife, Wyllis M. Leonhard, to expand an education and engineering scholarship program, and to create an endowment at the college of art and architecture.

U. of Akron (Ohio): $1-million from Margaret Donovan, of Medina County, Ohio, whose late husband Robert E. Donovan was an executive with Babcock & Wilcox, to endow an engineering professorship.

U. of Idaho (Moscow): $2.5-million bequest from Vaughan Prater McDonald, who died in 2000, to expand the Herbert E. and Vaughan Prater Lattig Endowment for Academic Excellence, which she established in 1984 to support academic programs.

U. of North Carolina at Greensboro: $1.3-million pledge from Helena Gabriel Houston, 96, a former elementary-school teacher in Charlotte, N.C., to establish a scholarship fund for education students.

U. of Oregon (Eugene): $10-million from Bob and Beverly Lewis, of Newport Beach, Calif., the owners of a beer-distribution company, to purchase equipment, endow a professorship, and provide other support for a new neuroscience center.

U. of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia): $2-million from Roxana Cannon Arsht, a retired judge for the state of Delaware, to create the S. Samuel Arsht Professorship for corporate law in honor of her late husband, who was a partner with Morris, Nichols, Arsht & Tunnell, in Wilmington, Del.

Virginia Tech (Blacksburg): $5-million matching gift from Robert B. Pamplin Sr., chairman of the R.B. Pamplin Corporation, in Portland, Ore., and his son, Robert Pamplin Jr., president of the company, for an endowment fund to support scholarships and fellowships for M.B.A. students. They have pledged to match up to that amount in gifts raised from other sources for the M.B.A. program.