International Group Gets $20-Million; Other Gifts

World Learning, in Brattleboro, Vt., has received a $20-million gift from an anonymous donor.

World Learning is a nonprofit organization that provides cultural, economic, language, and other kinds of training to professionals and high-school and university students preparing to work or study abroad, primarily in developing countries. The organization also provides training to people working in developing countries on projects to strengthen nonprofit organizations and spur economic development, and it organizes exchanges for university and high-school students, scholars, and others.

The donor asked that approximately $9-million of the gift go toward developing a new program on Middle Eastern and Islamic cultures in the organization’s School for International Training; the donor earmarked the rest for the organization’s endowment.

Other recent gifts:

Falmouth Hospital (Mass.): $2.5-million from Ruth Virginia (Ginny) Nicholas and her husband, Peter, co-founder and former chief executive officer of Boston Scientific, a developer of medical devices, for capital improvements.

Johns Hopkins U. (Baltimore): $2-million from the author Tom Clancy to establish a chair in ophthalmology at the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins Medicine.

Kansas State University (Manhattan): $1.8-million in the form of a charitable remainder trust from Sharon Spencer and her husband, Dean, both alumni, of Netawaka, Kan., for the Colleges of Agriculture and Human Ecology and the Department of Intercollegiate Athletics. Mr. Spencer is a rancher.

Laurel School (Shaker Heights, Ohio): $1-million pledge over five years from Barbara Peterson Ruhlman, a member of the school’s Board of Trustees and president of the Thomas F. Peterson Foundation, in Cleveland, to establish an endowed chair in outdoor education at this school for girls. Half of the gift will come from the foundation, which was established by Mrs. Ruhlman’s father.

Maryland Institute College of Art (Baltimore): $5-million from an anonymous donor — $3-million for the college’s endowment, and $2-million to help construct a facility for a new center on digital art and design.

Meharry Medical College (Nash-ville): $1.5-million unrestricted gift from Wendell Cox, an alumnus and co-founder of Bell Broadcasting Company and owner of Motor City Broadcast Properties, both in Detroit.

U. of Maryland Medical Center (Baltimore): $5-million from Roslyn Stoler and her husband, Leonard, the owner of 13 auto dealerships in the Baltimore area, to construct an outpatient-treatment facility.

U. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: $3-million from Lowry Caudill, an alumnus and co-founder of Magellan Laboratories in Durham, N.C., for capital improvements to the physical-sciences and technology facility; $2.5-million from a trust set up by an anonymous donor to establish a professorship in the Department of Pediatrics for the study of sudden infant death syndrome; and $2-million from John Powell, an alumnus in Palo Alto, Calif., to establish a professorship for the study of the American South in the College of Arts and Sciences.

U. of the Arts (Philadelphia): $1-million from Elaine Levitt, a trustee, and her husband, Joel Gershman, president of Jager Management, in Maple Shade, N.J., for capital improvements to a performing-arts auditorium.