Gifts Roundup: Dartmouth Gets $20 Million; Children’s Hospital Receives $10 Million

A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:

Dartmouth College

Rick and Allison Magnuson pledged $20 million to establish the Magnuson Family Center for Entrepreneurship, an incubator for alumni, students, and faculty who want to launch business ventures and social enterprises.

Rick Magnuson founded GI Partners, a private-equity firm in San Francisco. He graduated from Dartmouth in 1979.

He said in a news release that the gift was inspired by his personal experiences as a student: Along with classmate John Saer, he started a transportation service while the two were still undergraduates at Dartmouth. The new center will provide students with opportunities to learn basic business skills.

Children’s Hospital of Orange County

William and Nancy Thompson gave $10 million through their family foundation to create a new autism center that will serve children with autism-spectrum disorders and their families.

William Thompson retired as chief executive of the investment firm PIMCO in 2009.

The Thompsons have been supporting efforts to help children with autism and their families since 2005, after their daughter, a special-education teacher who worked with autistic children, brought the condition to their attention.

University of Florida

Jon and Beverly Thompson donated $10 million for programs aimed at helping people better understand and adapt to Earth’s rapidly changing environment and ecosystems.

The money will back outreach programs, research, and information-sharing efforts with the goal of translating complex and sometimes contentious topics into digestible data that can educate the public, prepare communities, and influence policymakers. The gift supports the first phase of the university’s multidisciplinary Earth Systems Initiative.

Jon Thompson earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in geological sciences at the university in 1961 and 1962, respectively. He retired as president of ExxonMobil Exploration, and vice president of ExxonMobil Corporation, in 2004. Beverly Thompson graduated from the university with a master’s degree in education in 1962.

Virginia Tech

Joe and Bobby May gave $5 million through their family foundation for a program that will create a pathway to college, starting in the ninth grade, for 60 first-generation students a year.

Joe May is chairman and chief technology officer of Electronic Instrumentation and Technology. He served in the Virginia House of Delegates from 1994 to 2014, and earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the university in 1962.

California University of Pennsylvania

Tom and Karen Rutledge donated $4.2 million to launch the Rutledge Institute for Early Childhood Education.

Tom Rutledge is chairman and chief executive of Charter Communications, a U.S. cable provider. He earned an economics degree from the university in the 1970s.

The institute will include a new preschool-learning program on the university’s campus, and some of the money will go toward scholarships for 20 local children, ages 3-5, to attend the preschool program, and pay tuition, fees, and room costs for a group of university students who enroll in the childhood-education program.

Howard University

Irvin and Pamela Reid gave $1 million to support undergraduate and graduate scholarships and faculty grants in the Department of Psychology. Psychologist by training, the couple met while students at Howard.

Irvin Reid served as president of Wayne State University from 1997 to 2008 and as president of Montclair University from 1989 to 1997. Earlier in his career he was an associate professor at Howard School of Business (1978-1979). He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in psychology from Howard in 1963 and 1966, respectively.

Pamela Trotman Reid served as president of the University of Saint Joseph from 2008 to 2016 and is currently a senior scholar for the Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute for Child and Family Development at Wayne State University. She earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Howard in 1967.

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