Jody and John Arnhold Give $6.1 Million to Promote Dance Education Programs (Gifts Roundup)

A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:

OSF Healthcare

William DiSomma gave $25 million through his DiSomma Family Foundation to expand the Jump Arches (Applied Research for Community Health through Engineering and Simulation) program to improve community health and patient care through supportive medical devices, robots, artificial intelligence, and process improvements.

DiSomma co-founded Jump Trading, a Chicago firm that specializes in high-frequency electronic stock trades, in 1999. Before that he worked as a stock trader on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

University of Maryland

Barry and Mary Gossett donated nearly $21.3 million to establish the Barry and Mary Gossett Center for Academic and Personal Excellence, a program that aims to help student-athletes further develop their academic capabilities and help them with the transition to life after college.

Barry Gossett is a retired chairman and CEO of Acton Mobile Industries, a Baltimore supplier of mobile offices, construction trailers, and modular buildings. He retired as chairman and CEO of Williams Scotsman, a modular-building company, in 2002, after more than 30 years there. He serves on the university’s Board of Regents, and he and his wife previously gave the university $10 million to build a team house for the football team.

Columbia University Teachers College

John and Jody Arnhold gave $6.1 million to start the Arnhold Institute for Dance Education Research, Policy and Leadership, which will focus on research that provides a rationale for public policies that encourage high-quality dance programs, especially in pre-K-12 public education.

Jody Arnhold taught dance in New York public schools for more than 20 years and created the Arnhold Graduate Dance Education Program at Hunter College of the City University of New York. John Arnhold co-founded Arnhold LLC, a New York investment firm.

Louisiana Tech University

Harry and Rubye Gaston left $2.5 million to endow the College of Education and the College of Engineering and Science. The money will support undergraduate scholarships, graduate assistantships and fellowships, and the Engineering General Endowment.

Harry Gaston Jr. earned a bachelor of science in petroleum engineering at Louisiana Tech in 1952. He started his career at the company that would become Ryder Scott Company Petroleum Consultants and was president from 1991 until his retirement, in 1997. He died in 2005; Rubye Gaston died in 2018.

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

Correction: A previous version of this article mistakenly said that John Arnhold co-founded Arnold LLC rather than Arnhold LLC.