McGill Gets $200 Million for Scholarships: Gifts Roundup

A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:

McGill University

John and Marcy McCall MacBain’s foundation pledged $200 million to the university in Montreal, in Canada. The funds will cover a scholarship that provides living costs and university fees for 75 students each year to pursue a master’s or a professional degree, such as law or medicine. Fifty out of the 75 students will be chosen from Canada.

The couple, whose philanthropy is the McCall MacBain Foundation, noted in a news release that scholarships helped them attend college. John graduated from McGill in 1980 with a degree in economics, and he was also a Rhodes Scholar. He purchased a company that eventually became known as the conglomerate Autotrader. Marcy teaches at the University of Oxford and is the director of the family’s foundation.

New York University

An anonymous gift of $75 million to the university’s Langone Health’s Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Cancer Center will establish a center for blood cancers, like leukemia, lymphoma, and multiple myeloma. The gift will enhance research and clinical space.

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The estate of Claude Adams III left a bequest of $27.7 million to the university’s school of dentistry, which will be renamed the Claude A. Adams Jr. and Grace Phillips Adams School of Dentistry in honor of his parents.

Adams III, who died in 2018, followed in his father’s footsteps and practiced dentistry. He earned his undergraduate degree from Duke University in 1942 and his dental degree from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1949. Adams’s previous gifts to UNC were for scholarships.

John Carroll University

An anonymous graduate made an unrestricted $20 million pledge to the institution, saying their experience at the university was shaped by former university president Rev. Joseph Schell and Rev. Henry Birkenhauer, as well as Walter Nosal, founder of the John Carroll Counseling Center.

St. Lawrence University

An anonymous donor made a gift of $10 million plus a $5 million planned gift to the university. The $5 million planned gift will create two endowed professorships in public health; one in a STEM or social-science field and one in an arts, humanities, or an interdisciplinary field.

Piedmont Heart

Brett and Louise Samsky and their son Connor are making a $11 million donation to establish the Samsky Invasive Cardiovascular Services Center. The new donation follows their $6 million gift from 2015 to establish the Samsky Advanced Heart Failure Center.

Brett Samsky is the CEO of an Atlanta financial firm and has experienced heart failure and lung cancer. He received lifesaving heart surgery from Piedmont Atlanta before his first donation.

University of Detroit Mercy

Arnold Jarboe left an estate gift of $6.1 million to endow a new chair in the college of business administration.

Jarboe, who graduated in 1954, died in 2016. He was a lawyer for the Social Security Administration.

University of Wyoming

Lois Mottonen left a $5 million estate gift for the college of business to create a new student center, support the university’s Heritage Center and provide scholarships. She died in 2017.

Mottonen lived her entire life in Wyoming. She graduated with honors from the University of Wyoming in 1951 and went on to attend graduate school at the University of Virginia, supported by a fellowship from the Ford Foundation.

Mottonen was the second woman in Wyoming to be granted a certified public-accountant license but, after graduation, she couldn’t find a job in accounting because CPA firms did not hire women at that time. A dean eventually advised her to apply to the U.S. Treasury Department. She later worked as an Internal Revenue Service agent from 1951 to 1979 and was nominated for the department’s Women’s Award for promoting women’s equality in government.

After working for Treasury, she worked for the Wyoming Department of Education. In 1995, in appreciation for her work in equal opportunity for women, Mottonen was invited to tea with President Clinton and Hillary Clinton as part of the Women’s Bureau of the U.S. Department of Labor’s 75th anniversary.

She has also appeared on the game show What’s My Line? where contestants asked her questions to guess her job.

Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Minnesota

Norm Skalicky’s foundation donated $5 million to pay for staff wages, training, and new technology. The organization is the second-largest affiliate of the national group in Minnesota. It serves 6,500 youths each year.

The gift will launch a new endowment campaign. Skalicky is the CEO of Stearns Bank.

Loras College

Bill Miller donated $5 million to help the institution complete campus upgrades, including to Keane Hall, the Rock Bowl, and the college’s multimedia program space.

Miller became president of a electromechanical company and launched two businesses, one of which was sold to Honeywell and the other to a division of Koch Industries.

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