Donor Who Sued Georgetown in 2013 Gives Its Law School $10.5 Million: Gifts Roundup

A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Claude A. Adams III left $27.7 million to support the School of Dentistry, which has been renamed the UNC Claude A. Adams Jr. and Grace Phillips Adams School of Dentistry in honor of the donors’ parents.

Part of the gift will create new merit scholarships and add to existing scholarship funds. The bequest will also support professorships and staff awards, and will extend the student service-learning program, where students work side by side with practicing dentists at 50 partner sites in underserved areas throughout North Carolina.

Adams, who died in 2018, practiced dentistry in Durham, N.C., for almost 25 years. His previous gifts to UNC’s dental school included scholarships for nearly 100 students.

Georgetown University Law Center

Scott Ginsburg pledged $10.5 million to back the expansion of the center’s campus and to create four professorships that are named for the donor.

Ginsburg co-founded Chancellor Media Corporation, a radio broadcasting company, and owns Boardwalk Auto Group, a collection of luxury-auto dealerships in Texas and California. Earlier in his career, he served as staff director and general counsel of the U.S. Senate’s Labor Subcommittee on Employment, Poverty, and Migratory Labor.

He graduated from Georgetown Law in 1978 and has been a longtime donor to the institution. In 2013, Ginsburg and the Law School got into a legal scuffle in 2013 over $5 million he pledged, but later settled the matter.

Albion College

Joe and Julie Serra committed $5 million to build a new fitness and activity space for students at the Dow Recreation and Wellness Center, and to renovate Kresge Gymnasium, or possibly go toward building a new athletics facility.

Joe Serra is president of Serra Automotive, which was founded by his father, Albert, in 1973, and today he owns auto dealerships throughout the country. He earned his degree in economics and management from Albion in 1982.

Gardner-Webb University

Robert and Carolyn Tucker gave $4 million to endow the Tucker Heart, Soul, Mind, and Strength Scholarship, which will pay for the scholarship recipients’ four-year education at the university including tuition, room, and board.

The Tuckers own the Concord, N.C., footwear retailer Shoe Show. Their daughter, Lisa, is a 1989 graduate of the university. The Tuckers gave the university $5 million in 2010 to build a new student center.

Bloomsburg University Foundation

Mitzi Marie Bryfogle left $2.2 million to support the Anchor Program, an effort to provide 15-year-olds to 18-year-olds from the Pennsylvania foster-care system a chance to explore their academic interests through a multiyear summer residential college life experience program.

Bryfogle, who died in 2016 at 84, owned with her later husband, James, an ice cream parlor in Palmer Township, Pa. The gift is made through her estate.

George Mason University Schar School of Policy and Government

Billionaire industrialist Charles Koch gave $1.1 million through his Charles Koch Foundation for research on immigration, population change, and labor markets.

Koch has served as chairman and chief executive of his family’s company, Koch Industries, since 1967. He gave the university $5 million in 2018 for three economics professorships.

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