$200 Million Gift Goes to Vaccine Research and $10 Million for an Environmental-Law Program (Gifts Roundup)

A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:

Massachusetts General Hospital

Phillip (Terry) and Susan Ragon gave $200 million to endow the Ragon Institute of Massachusetts General, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Harvard, a research center focused on discovering vaccines for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and other diseases that attack the immune system.

Phillip Ragon founded the database software company, InterSystems Corporation in 1978. Susan Ragon is its vice president for finance, administration, and recruitment. The couple helped start the institute with a $100 million grant in 2009.

Case Western Reserve University

Coleman Burke pledged $10 million to establish the Coleman P. Burke Center for Environmental Law and expand course offerings and research in that area of the law.

Burke founded and leads the commercial real-estate companies Waterfront NY, Bulgroup Properties, and North River Company. A 1970 graduate of the law school, he was a partner at the law firm of Burke & Burke for 13 years before starting his real=estate companies.

Burke has been actively involved in a number of environmental groups over the years and has served on the boards of the National Audubon Society, the National Forest Foundation, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and others.

Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts

Estelle Barenbaum Rubens left nearly $8 million to establish the Raymond D. and Estelle Rubens Travel Scholarship Fund, which will be awarded to at least three students each year.

The scholarship will pay for travel and travel-related expenses for students to visit Europe during the summer following their third year of study and provide full tuition for students during their following two semesters at the academy.

Rubens died in 2018, at the age of 88. She worked for 15 years as a docent at the academy’s museum guiding visitors on tours of PAFA’s permanent collection and special exhibitions. She was the widow of Raymond Rubens, a Philadelphia lawyer who died in 2002.

Lehigh University

Jordan and Julie Hitch gave $5 million to back a project to construct six new student-housing buildings. The couple have two children who attend the university.

Jordan Hitch, a private investor, worked earlier in his career as a consultant for the global-management consulting firm Bain & Company and then joined the private equity firm Bain Capital. He earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Lehigh in 1988.

Vanderbilt University

Conner and Ginny Searcy pledged $5 million to establish a new Dean’s Chair within the College of Arts and Science.

Conner Searcy founded Trive Capital, a private equity firm in Dallas. The couple met as students at Vanderbilt. He graduated in 1997 and she in 1996. Since then, they have given to create a scholarship to support students in the College of Arts and Science, and they have served as guest lecturers and university board members.

University of Kansas

Margaret Ann Zimmerman left $4.2 million to create scholarships for nursing students at the KU Medical Center. The money will provide support for postdoctoral students and full-time doctoral students, and used to recruit students in the undergraduate nursing honors program and the Nursing Pathways diversity program.

Zimmerman, who died in 2017 at 94, was a retired nurse who had worked as a child health nursing supervisor at the Montgomery County Health Department in Maryland. She earned a certificate in nursing from KU Medical Center in 1947 before moving on to the University of Minnesota, where she earned a public-health nursing degree.

University of California at Los Angeles

William (Jim) and Naomi Ellison gave $1 million to endow a professorship in restorative dentistry in the School of Dentistry.

Jim Ellison is the retired founder of Ellison Technologies, a manufacturing solutions company. Dr. Naomi Ellison is a dentist who earned her D.D.S. degree from UCLA in 1981. She made her first gift to the dental school when she was still a student, to support a subsidy fund for patients from underserved populations.

To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated throughout the week.