Technology Investor Pledges $32-Million to Rice U.; Other Recent Big Gifts

Three institutions have received big gifts:

• Burt McMurtry, a private investor and a founding partner of Technology Venture Investors, in Menlo Park, Calif., and his wife, Deedee, have pledged $32-million to Rice University, in Houston. The money will come through a charitable remainder trust and most of it is unrestricted. The couple earmarked approximately $4-million of the pledge to endow the university’s undergraduate residential colleges, and $1-million to help pay for a new dormitory. Mr. and Ms. McMurtry graduated from Rice in 1956.

• Saint Louis University has received a $30-million donation from the family of Edward A. Doisy, who was a professor at the School of Medicine and who won the 1943 Nobel Prize in Medicine for discovering the chemical nature of vitamin K. The money will pay for a new biomedical-research center scheduled to open in 2007. The university plans to name the facility for Mr. Doisy, who died in 1986.

• Peter Karmanos Jr., chief executive officer of Compuware, an Internet-technology company in Detroit, has pledged $25-million to the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, in Detroit, to endow research on prostate cancer, and pay for new construction projects. The center is named for Mr. Karmanos’s wife, who died in 1989. Mr. Karmanos made a $15-million donation to establish the institute in 1995.

Other recent gifts:

Audrain Medical Center (Mexico, Mo.): $4-million bequest from Margaret Waters Jordan, who owned Waters Furniture, in Vandalia, Mo., with her husband, Gerald. Ms. Jordan, who died in 2004, stipulated that $2-million go to the oncology department and $2-million to the cardiology department. Mr. Jordan died in 1997.

City of Hope Cancer Center (Duarte, Calif.): $6-million from Michael Amini, chairman and chief executive officer of AICO, Amini Innovation Corporation, a home-furnishings company in Pico Rivera, Calif., to build a facility that will house the center’s blood analysis, collection, processing, and transfusion programs.

High Point U. (N.C.): $2-million from Mark Norcross, president of Mark David, a furniture company in High Point, and his wife, Rena, for unrestricted use in the graduate school. Mr. Norcross serves on the university’s Board of Trustees.

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (New York): $5-million pledge from David M. Rubenstein, co-founder and managing director of the Carlyle Group, a private equity firm in Washington, for general support. The money will be paid over five years. Mr. Rubenstein serves on the center’s Board of Directors.

Saint Louis U.: $2-million from Steven J. Bander, a nephrologist in St. Louis and an adjunct professor at the School of Medicine, and his wife, Patricia, to endow a professorship in nephrology. The university also received $2-million from James B. Peter, founder of Specialty Laboratories, in Valencia, Calif., and his wife, Joan, to endow a professorship in biochemistry and molecular biology. Dr. Bander graduated from the university in 1975 and Dr. Peter graduated from the School of Medicine in 1958.

Trinity Lutheran College (Issaquah, Wash.): $1-million from Charles and Erdie Brodahl, retired owners of Alaska Neon Engineering Company, in Anchorage, for scholarships, the college’s relocation, and new academic programs.

U. of Michigan (Ann Arbor): $3-million from Sanford Weill, chairman emeritus of Citigroup and a director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and his wife, Joan, to endow the dean’s post at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and establish a discretionary fund. The university also received $1-million from Arnold C. Pohs, a retired chief executive officer of CommNet Cellular, in Englewood, Colo., and his wife, Constance, for the communications-studies department. The money will support research and teaching on communications, mass media, and the public interest, and the effects of communications technologies on government, life, and social networks in the United States. Mr. and Ms. Pohs graduated from the university in 1948 and 1949, respectively.

U. of Missouri at Columbia: $8-million bequest from Margaret Waters Jordan, who owned Waters Furniture, in Vandalia, Mo., with her husband, Gerald. Most of the bequest — $5.3-million — will go to the Chancellor’s Fund for Excellence, with half of the money being used for scholarships. The remaining $2.7-million will go to U. of Missouri Health Care, to pay for health care for poor people. Ms. Jordan, a 1931 graduate of the university, died in 2004, and Mr. Jordan died in 1997.

U. of North Dakota Foundation (Grand Forks): approximately $1-million from a group of anonymous donors for scholarships for American Indian students who are of Sioux heritage.

U. of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas: $2.8-million bequest from Pauline Evetts Weinberger, of Dallas, for clinical and research programs. Ms. Weinberger, who died in 2002, was the wife of Adolph J. Weinberger, the founder of a company that later became part of the Eckerd Drugs chain. Mr. Weinberger died in 1972.

U. of Vermont (Burlington): $5-million from Leonard Miller, a retired vice president of Pasadena Homes, in Hollywood, Fla., and his wife, Carolyn, president of Wimbish-Riteway Realtors, in Miami Beach, to renovate a campus building and to endow two new professorships in Holocaust studies. Mr. Miller graduated from the university in 1951.

U. of Wisconsin at Milwaukee: $1-million pledge from Stan Stojkovic, dean of the university’s Helen Bader School of Social Welfare, for unrestricted use within the school.

Wheeler School (Providence, R.I.): $2-million from Bengt Karlsson, founding partner of Abaqus, an engineering-software company that was bought last year by Dassault Systemes, and his wife, Kathryn, a teacher at this private school. The money will support financial aid and building projects at the Hamilton School at Wheeler, a section of the school that serves students with special learning needs.

Xavier High School (New York): $5-million pledge from Miguel B. Fernandez, chairman of MBF Healthcare Partners, a private-equity firm in Coral Gables, Fla., that focuses on health-care services, to build an auditorium. Mr. Fernandez graduated from this Jesuit preparatory school in 1972.

Yale Center for Corporate Governance and Performance (New Haven, Conn.): $5-million from George J. Vojta, chief executive officer of the Westchester Group, a consulting firm in New York that focuses on corporate governance and research, and his wife, Susan, for an operating fund. Mr. Vojta is chairman of the center’s Board of Advisers. The center also received $2.5-million from an anonymous donor.

— Compiled by Maria Di Mento