Hampden-Sydney College Lands $30 Million From Former Education Secretary
The donation from Eugene Hickok and his wife, Katharine, will support professors and staff, as well as course offerings at the men’s liberal arts college in Virginia.
By Maria Di Mento
Senior Reporter
November 12, 2024 | Read Time: 3 minutes
A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:
Hampden-Sydney College
Eugene and Katharine Hickok gave $30 million through their Endeavour Legacy Foundation to endow faculty and staff positions and expand this men’s college’s business, foreign affairs, and national security curriculum.
Eugene Hickok served as U.S. deputy secretary of education from 2003 to 2005 under then-President George W. Bush, and as secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Education, from 1995 to 2001. He worked as an education lobbyist at the Washington firm Dutko Worldwide, now Dutko Grayling, after serving in the Bush administration. A 1972 graduate of the college, Hickok served as director of the college’s financial aid office earlier in his career and later became a political science professor at Dickinson College for 15 years.
Katharine Hickok is the daughter of the late Stanley Pauley, who lead the Richmond, Va. polyurethane materials producer Carpenter Company and served on the college’s Board of Trustees for a number of years. The Hickoks gave Hampden Sydney $20 million earlier this year to renovate Gilmer Hall, which will house the economics and business department, and its government and foreign affairs department.
Boise State University Athletics and St. Luke’s Health System
Allen and Billie Dee Noble left $50 million, $25 million apiece, to the two Boise area organizations. Their bequest to Boise State University Athletics will support the football program, and their bequest to St. Luke’s Health System, which operates medical centers throughout Idaho, will support a range of programs.
Allen Noble was a farmer and investor. He held a stake in the former agriculture and construction equipment company, International Harvester; and was a founding investor in Micron Technology, a Boise, Idaho, corporation that manufactures computer memory and storage products. He died in 2021 at 92. Billie Dee Noble passed away in 2017.
Dallas Baptist University
Linda Carter and her children, Ron Carter, and Christi Carter Urschel, pledged $20 million to support the business school, which will be re-named for Carter and her late husband, Don Carter.
Don Carter was a Dallas businessman best known as a co-founder and majority investor in the Dallas Mavericks basketball team. He co-founded the team in 1980 and sold the team in 1996 for an estimated $125 million. He retained a minority stake in the NBA team. Carter also owned a number of other businesses including banks, trucking companies, hotels, and cattle ranches.
University of Maryland Upper Chesapeake Health
Danny and Gail Jones pledged $20 million to support and endow behavioral and mental health programs, and primary care services at several of the system’s medical centers, health clinics, and an assisted-living facility.
The Joneses own Jones Junction, a Bel Air, Md., auto dealer that operates 10 car dealerships throughout Maryland and was founded 107 years ago by Danny Jones’s family. They previously gave the health system gifts totaling $1 million.
School of American Ballet
Zita Ezpeleta and her husband, Kewsong Lee, gave and pledged $3 million to the prestigious ballet school, which is affiliated with the New York City Ballet. Of the total, the couple have given $2 million to endow the school’s dual position of artistic director and chair of faculty, and they pledged $1 million to support improvements to the school’s Lincoln Center headquarters.
Ezpeleta is an attorney in New York who has served on the school’s Board of Directors since 2011. Kewsong Lee served as a co-CEO of Carlyle Group, a private equity firm in Washington from 2017 to 2022. Prior to joining Carlyle Group in 2013, he worked for Warburg Pincus for two decades, becoming a partner at the New York private equity firm.
This isn’t the couple’s first donation to the ballet school. They gave $1 million last year to establish the Lee and Ezpeleta Advancement Program for Choreography fund, which supports a choreography composition course for SAB’s intermediate and advanced students, and a mentorship post that will provide choreography students with an advisor. They also gave SAB $1 million in 2015 to create and endow a professional placement manager position, to help graduating students who are auditioning for jobs with ballet companies.
To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated regularly.
