NYU’s Business School Lands $50 Million From Namesake Donor

A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:

New York University Stern School of Business

The business school’s namesake, Leonard Stern, gave $50 million to back undergraduate scholarships and expand the business school’s Breakthrough Scholars Leadership Program. Stern gave $5.75 million in 2015 to start the program, which is aimed at high-performing students from diverse backgrounds.

Stern is chairman and CEO of the Hartz Group, a commercial real-estate firm in New York, and Hartz Mountain Industries, a holding company that was founded in the 1920s by his father, now deceased, as a pet-supply business. Stern, whose net worth stands at $4.2 billion, according to Forbes, founded Homes for the Homeless, a nonprofit that provides housing, education, and employment training for people experiencing homelessness.

Stern earned a bachelor’s degree and an MBA from NYU in 1957 and 1959, respectively, and he serves as a member of the NYU Stern Executive Board. The business school was named for him in 1988 when he donated $30 million.

Purdue University

William Elmore gave $25 million to support the engineering school which has been renamed the Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. The gift will be used for a variety of short and long term needs including to launching new research and education centers, and efforts aimed at retaining and recruiting faculty and students.

Elmore co-founded Foundation Capital, a Palo Alto venture capital firm that invests in technology companies including Netflix, Lending Club, SunRun, and Chegg. He earned a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from Purdue in 1975 and 1976 respectively.

University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Leon and Sandra Levine donated $11.5 million through their Leon Levine Foundation to support the Levine Scholars Program, which was established by the couple in 2009. The scholarships pay the full tuition and fees of high-school students committed to community service and provide them with study-abroad opportunities, professional networking, mentorship, and other resources.

Levine founded the Family Dollar chain of discount retail stores in Charlotte, N.C., in 1959 and expanded the business over time throughout the country, taking it public in the 1970s. He retired as chairman and CEO of the company in 2003, and his son Howard now runs the business.

University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts

Ilene Forsyth pledged nearly $6.3 million to create a new professorship and a visiting graduate student fellowship in the Department of History of Art. The Ilene H. Forsyth Distinguished Professorship will be held by a tenured professor with a long record of scholarship in the field of art history, and the Forsyth Visiting Graduate Student Fellowship is geared toward international students.

Forsyth is a Medievalist art historian who taught at the university from 1962 through 1997, becoming a tenured professor in 1974. She became a professor emerita of the university in 1998.

Forsyth earned a bachelor’s degree in English literature at the university in 1950 and later earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in art history from Columbia University in 1955 and 1960, respectively. To date, she has contributed nearly $15 million to the Department of History of Art.

University of Colorado Athletics

Jeff and Orsi Crawford donated $5.5 million through their Crawford Family Foundation to support what will now be known as the Crawford Family Whole Student-Athlete program.

The program will combine student-athlete support and wellness services in the areas of physical and psychological health, with efforts that aim to help student-athletes achieve academic success while in college and prepare them for transitioning into another field once their sports careers have ended. The program will analyze data collected from each programmatic area to determine what efforts make athletes and teams most successful.

Jeff Crawford co-founded RMI Capital Management, a real-estate investment firm in Denver that serves hospitals, health care systems, and private medical practices. He graduated from the university in 1990.

University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee

James and Maureen Mellowes gave $1 million, half of which will support programs within the School of Architecture and Urban Planning. The couple said the rest of the money can be used at UWM Chancellor Mark Mone’s discretion. Mone said in a news release that he plans to use his half for student scholarships and emergency grants.

The portion going to the School of Architecture and Urban Planning will support the Mellowes Fund for Architecture, which provides unrestricted support for the school; the James Mellowes Graduate Research Fund, which encourages graduate students in architecture to pursue research activities; and the Bob Greenstreet Honorary Scholarship Fund, which provides student support and is named for a former dean of the School of Architecture and Urban Planning.

Jim Mellowes earned two degrees at UWM: a bachelor’s in architectural studies in 1971 and a master’s in architecture in 1973. He co-founded Mellowes & Paladino Architects in 1993 and is now partially retired.

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