Northern Illinois University Lands $40 Million From Bausterts

A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:

Northern Illinois University Foundation

James Baustert and Theo Bahwell Baustert gave $40 million through their Baustert Family Foundation to help launch the Baustert Bahwell Health Technology Center. The new center, scheduled to start construction in 2026, will bring together health-care programs and experts from nursing, public health, audiology, biomedical engineering, anatomy, and other departments.

Of the total, the couple are giving $14 million for new programs, technology, faculty endowments, and student scholarships; $14 million to endow maintenance; and $10 million to support construction costs. The remaining $2 million will go to the Northern Fund, which supports new university projects.

James Baustert co-founded Cardiac Pacemakers, a former St. Paul, Minn., manufacturer of pacemakers and defibrillators. The company was acquired by Eli Lilly in 1978 and is now a subsidiary of Boston Scientific. Theo Baustert studied speech-language pathology at the university in 1954-’55, and the couple met there when James Baustert visited the campus for an event.

Military Aviation Museum

Gerald and Elaine Yagen gave $30 million to establish an endowment for this Virginia Beach aviation and military history museum, which they founded as a private organization in 2005. The museum houses Gerald Yagen’s private collection of vintage military aircraft and WWII structures, and is transitioning into a public museum. The Yagens also donated the aircraft collection and land for the museum.

Gerald Yagan’s collection spans the first 50 years of aviation history and contains aircraft from the early 1900s to the Korean War period in the early 1950s. The collection includes historically significant examples, such as a North American Aviation P-51 Mustang, the Goodyear FG-1D Corsair, and a rare WWII German Messerschmitt Bf 109.

He started his business career working for a recruiting firm and went on to found Search and Recruit International, a recruiting and headhunting firm focused on connecting military veterans with defense industry jobs. He later founded Centura, Tidewater Tech, and the Aviation Institute of Maintenance, for-profit vocational schools for adults.

Mayo Clinic

Louis Gerstner Jr. and his family gave $25 million to establish the Gerstner Scholars Program in AI Translation. Through this program, junior and early-career clinicians and researchers will collaborate with experts in artificial intelligence, data science, and informatics to work on accelerating early disease detection, and improving the accuracy of diagnostics and treatment.

Gerstner served as CEO and chairman of the technology giant IBM, in Armonk, N.Y., from 1993 to 2002. He then joined the Carlyle Group, a private-equity firm, in Washington, where he served as chairman and later a senior adviser until he retired in 2016. Before joining IBM, he served as chairman and CEO of RJR Nabisco, president of the American Express Company, and a director of the management consulting firm McKinsey & Company.

Nonprofit Finance Fund

MacKenzie Scott gave $22 million through her Yield Giving fund. The gift is unrestricted. The nonprofit’s leaders said in a news release that they plan to use the money to expand the community development financial institution’s support for nonprofits led by and serving people of color. This is the billionaire philanthropist’s second donation to this nonprofit. She gave the organization $15 million in 2020.

Scott is a novelist who helped create Amazon with her former husband, Jeff Bezos. Her net worth is estimated at $34 billion, and she has given a total of more than $17.3 billion to more than 2,000 nonprofits in the last four years. Scott appeared on the Chronicle’s annual Philanthropy 50 list of the biggest donors in 2020.

Ohio Wesleyan University

Kathrine Trine Grissom pledged $12 million to establish the Mary Ellen Grissom Endowed Fund, which will provide scholarships to first-generation college students and pay for their room and board and other expenses, such as laptops, transportation costs, and medical bills. The fund is named for the donor’s late mother, who died in a car accident when Grissom was 8 months old.

Grissom earned a degree in sociology from the university in 1992 and started her career as a case aide in the social services department at an indigent trauma hospital in Louisville, Ky.

She later joined the executive search firm Korn/Ferry International as a researcher, and eventually became a senior associate with the firm, specializing in searches for managed-care companies.

She left that career to raise her son and then returned to school to earn a graduate degree in drug and alcohol counseling and worked as a substance abuse counselor until retiring in 2014. She credited a professor she had as an undergraduate at Wesleyan who was the first person to detect a learning disability. After a formal diagnosis, Grissom saw her grades improve from C’s to straight A’s.

“I believe I would have fallen through the cracks at any other school,” Grissom said in a news release. “I want to give back to Ohio Wesleyan because it took a chance on me.”

University of California at Berkeley College of Environmental Design

Jon Stryker gave $10.8 million to support the Arcus Social Justice Corps, a program that provides financial support to students in any of the college’s master’s degree programs who pledge to work in social justice careers for three years after graduating. His donation will allow the university to provide students in the program with full tuition and fees so they can graduate without significant college debt.

Stryker is a billionaire who founded and leads the Arcus Foundation, a Kalamazoo, Mich., grant maker that supports social and environmental programs and groups. An architect who graduated from the university in 1989, Stryker is an heir to the Stryker Corporation fortune. The medical-products company was founded by his grandfather, Homer Stryker, a surgeon who invented the mobile hospital bed. He is a long-time donor who has appeared on the Chronicle’s annual Philanthropy 50 list of the biggest donors eight times since 2006.

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