Oklahoma State Gets $50 Million for Agricultural Sciences; MIT Receives $10 Million for Women’s Health (Gifts Roundup)

A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:

Oklahoma State University

Larry and Kayleen Ferguson donated $50 million through their Ferguson Family Foundation for the College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources, which will be named for them.

Half of the donation will be used to create an endowment for the college’s operations, and the remaining $25 million will go toward the construction of a new research and teaching building.

Larry Ferguson is a retired president and CEO of Schreiber Foods, a dairy company; he graduated from the university in 1975. Kayleen Ferguson is a retired English teacher.

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Rodger and Paula Riney gave $16.5 million through their Paula and Rodger Riney Foundation to establish the Riney Family Multiple Myeloma Initiative and support multiple myeloma research and patient care over the next two years.

Rodger Riney founded Scottrade, an investment firm that was acquired by TD Ameritrade in 2017. He is also a survivor of multiple myeloma and said in a news release that his experiences as a myeloma patient inspired the couple to donate with the hope that other donors will back the new program.

Ursinus College

Will and Joan Abele gave $11 million through their Abele Family Foundation to endow the Abele Scholars Program which will provide tuition grants, laptops, books, summer courses, enrichment programs, and loan forgiveness for first-generation college students and those from low- or middle-income families.

Will Abele, who graduated from Ursinus in 1961, is a retired president and owner of Henry Troemner, a manufacturer of precision weights and laboratory equipment in Philadelphia.

Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at MIT

Brit Jepson d’Arbeloff donated $10 million to launch the Brit Jepson d’Arbeloff Center on Women’s Health within the institute’s Sex Differences in Health and Disease Initiative. The money will back research aimed at uncovering the biological consequences of the sex chromosomes on women’s health and disease.

Jepson d’Arbeloff is an engineer who contributed to the design of the Redstone missile in the 1960s and programmed software for Digital Equipment Corporation and Teradyne, an automatic test equipment manufacturer co-founded by her late husband, Vladimir d’Arbeloff.

She is known in engineering circles as a pioneering engineer and advocate for women in science and engineering. She was the first woman to earn a mechanical engineering degree from Stanford University and graduated at the top of her class but had difficulty finding a job. When she earned a master’s degree at MIT in 1961, she was the only woman in the school’s mechanical engineering department.

United Way of Metropolitan Dallas

The Cree family gave $10 million for endowment. The money is coming from the children of Mary Anne Sammons Cree, a longtime donor to the nonprofit. The organization’s building will be named for Sammons Cree.

Sammons Cree is heir to a fortune created by her late father, Charles Sammons, who in 1938 founded Sammons Enterprises, a conglomerate of insurance, cable television, travel, industrial supply, and bottled-water companies.

City College of New York

Seymour and Pearl Moskowitz donated $2.4 million for the Master’s in Translational Medicine program, a collaboration between the Grove School of Engineering and CUNY School of Medicine.

Seymour Moskowitz is a co-founder of CoVant Management, a company that provides financial and operation expertise to counterterrorism technology businesses and U.S. government agencies. He formerly helped lead Anteon International Corporation, which provided information technology services to federal agencies. He graduated from CCNY in 1954 with an engineering degree.

Long Island University

Clint Severson and Conni Ahart gave $2 million to establish the Veterinary Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Management Center, which will be housed within the new College of Veterinary Medicine.

Severson formerly led Abaxis, a medical-devices company in Union City, Calif.

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