University in Texas Gets $35-Million; Other Gifts

Six institutions have received big gifts:

• Texas A&M University, in College Station, has received $35-million from George P. and Cynthia W. Mitchell to pay for two buildings for the physics and astronomy programs. Mr. Mitchell, the chairman and chief executive officer of Mitchell Energy and Development, a gas and oil company in Houston, graduated from the university in 1940.
• Anne T. and Robert M. Bass have pledged $30-million to the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. Half the money is earmarked for an endowment to support faculty members at the school, while $10-million will be used for new seminar classes. The remaining $5-million will be used to match donations from alumni who increase their annual gifts to the school by 50 percent. Mr. Bass is president of Keystone, an investment firm in Fort Worth, and a member of Stanford’s Board of Trustees and the business school’s advisory council.
• The University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, has received a $14-million donation from George Weiss for financial aid for undergraduate students. Mr. Weiss, a university trustee, is president of George Weiss Associates, a money-management firm in New York and Hartford, Conn. He graduated from the Wharton School in 1965 and founded the Say Yes to Education program, in Philadelphia.

• The university also received a $10-million gift from Vernon and Shirley Hill for a new teaching and research center at the School of Veterinary Medicine. Mr. Hill, a 1967 graduate of the Wharton School, is the founder and chairman of Commerce Bancorp, in Cherry Hill, N.J., and Ms. Hill is the founder and president of InterArch, an architecture and design firm in Mount Laurel, N.J.

• Preston Robert Tisch, chairman of Loews Corporation, in New York, and a co-owner of the New York Giants football team, and his family, have donated $10-million to the Brain Tumor Center at Duke University Medical Center and the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center, in Durham, N.C. One half of the money will be used to pay for research on cancer-fighting drugs, and the other $5-million, which Duke plans to match, will be used to create a fund for neuro-oncology research and to hire new faculty members. The Brain Tumor Center will be named for Mr. Tisch, a patient at the center, who was diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer last year and died last week.
• Ernst Volgenau, the founder and chairman of SRA International, an information-technology company in Fairfax, Va., and his wife, Sara, have donated $10-million to George Mason University, in Fairfax, for its School of Information Technology and Engineering. The money will be used to create a new bioengineering department, expand the school’s other academic programs, and recruit and hire professors. Mr. Volgenau is a professor of information technology and engineering at the school, which has been named for the couple.
• The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Foundation, in Simi Valley, Calif., has received $10-million from Boone Pickens, founder of BP Capital Management, in Dallas. The money will be used to finish paying construction costs of a building that houses the Air Force One airplane used by President Reagan and several other U.S. presidents. Mr. Pickens served as a Texas finance chairman of Mr. Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign.

Other recent gifts:

Augustana College (Sioux Falls, S.D.): $1.2-million from George Kapplinger, his wife, Gay Gubbrud Kapplinger, and their children, for an endowed professorship. Mr. Kapplinger, who graduated from the college in 1965, is a retired president of J.C. Penney International, the department-store company.

Birthright Israel Foundation (New York): $5-million pledge from Roger Hertog, vice chairman of Alliance Capital Management, an investment-services firm in New York, to enable young Jews to travel to Israel. The money, which Mr. Hertog gave to commemorate the 60th birthday of his wife, Susan, and the couple’s 40th-wedding anniversary, will be paid over five years.

California State U. at Fullerton: $4.5-million from Steven G. Mihaylo, chief executive officer of Inter-Tel, a telecommunications company in Tempe, Ariz., to construct a building for the College of Business and Economics. The university also received $2-million from an anonymous donor for the new building, and $1.1-million from Paul Folino, chief executive officer of Emulex, a data-storage developer, in Costa Mesa, Calif., for programs in the business college and for the new building.

College of Charleston, School of Education (S.C.): $3-million from Charles Volpe, retired president and a current board member of Kemet Electronics Corporation, in Simpsonville, S.C., and his wife, Andrea, for upkeep of a teacher-training center and for scholarships.

Community Foundation for Southern Arizona (Tucson): $8-million from Mel and Enid Zuckerman, who founded Canyon Ranch Resort, in Tucson, and their family, to establish the Zuckerman Community Outreach Foundation, a supporting organization that will focus on health and fitness.

George Mason U. (Fairfax, Va.): $3-million pledge from Donald de Laski, the retired chairman of Deltek Systems, a software company in Herndon, Va., and his wife, Nancy, to expand a performing-arts and academic building. Mr. de Laski is a trustee of the university’s foundation. The university also received $1-million from Arthur and Elizabeth Kellar to help support the Helen A. Kellar Institute for Human Disabilities, named in memory of their daughter. Mr. Kellar is the former chairman of E-Z Communications, in Fairfax, Va.

The Johns Hopkins U. (Baltimore): $2.3-million from Boone Pickens, founder of BP Capital Management, in Dallas, to endow a professorship in ophthalmology in the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins Medicine.

Maryland Soccer Foundation (Boyds): $3-million from John Hendricks, founder and chairman of Discovery Communications, in Silver Spring, Md., and his wife, Maureen, to construct five new soccer fields, subsidize soccer clubs, and pay for operating costs.

Michigan State U. College of Law (East Lansing): $4-million pledge from Clifton E. Haley, the college’s president and a former chief executive officer of Budget Rent A Car, in Parsippany, N.J., and his wife, Carolyn, to endow two professorships and two student scholarships.

Nature Conservancy in Wisconsin (Madison): $1-million from Debbie Cervenka, executive vice president of Phillips Plastics Corporation, in Hudson, Wis., and her husband, Bob, founder and chief executive officer of the company. The money will be used to purchase and protect from development the Tenderfoot Forest Reserve, in Vilas County, Wis.

New York U.: $2.4-million from Mortimer B. Zuckerman, chairman and publisher of the New York Daily News and editor in chief of U.S. News & World Report, to establish the Zuckerman Forum, an annual debate competition for undergraduate students, and to pay monetary prizes to the winners. The university also received $1-million from Constance Silver, a forensics profiler with the Miami-Dade County Police Department, and a clinical psychologist, in New York, to support a fellowship fund in the School of Social Work, and to pay for a new field-learning program.

Northwestern U., School of Communication (Evanston, Ill.): $5-million pledge from Richard Pepper, chairman emeritus of Pepper Construction Group, in Chicago, and his wife, Roxelyn, to endow the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders. The Peppers both graduated from Northwestern, and Ms. Pepper’s father was president of the university from 1949 to 1970.

U. of Arkansas (Fayetteville): $1-million pledge from Richard Greene, a real-estate developer in Fayetteville, and his wife, Tamara, to establish fellowships for graduate students in finance. The university plans to match the pledge. Mr. Greene graduated from the university in 1976.

U. of California at Irvine: $1-million pledge from Hazem Chehabi, a radiologist and the founder of Newport Diagnostic Center, in Newport Beach, Calif., and his wife, Salma, to pay for scholarships, graduate-student fellowships, and other campus programs. Dr. Chehabi is an assistant clinical professor at the university’s School of Medicine.

U. of California at Santa Barbara: $2.4-million from Brian Kelly, co-founder of Eastern Development Corporation, a real-estate development company in Woburn, Mass., and his wife, Patricia, an investor and former business owner, to the Autism Research and Training Center in the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education. The money will help pay for a new building and expand services for children with autism and their families.

U. of Nevada at Las Vegas: $3-million pledge from Joyce Mack and E. Parry Thomas and his family to establish a moot-court complex at the law school. Ms. Mack’s late husband, Jerry, and Mr. Thomas were business partners who started Valley Bank, in Las Vegas.

U. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: $2.5-million from an anonymous donor to establish a professorship in medicine at the Thurston Arthritis Research Center at the School of Medicine.

U. of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia): $2-million from Robert A. Ades, a senior partner at Robert A. Ades and Associates, a law firm in Washington, to endow a professorship at the Wharton School in honor of his father, Murrel J. Ades, a 1925 Wharton graduate. The university received another $2-million from Sankey V. Williams, the chief of general internal medicine at the School of Medicine, and his wife, Constance, a Pennsylvania state senator, to endow a professorship in the medical school that will be named for Ms. Williams’s father, Leon Hess, the former chairman of the Amerada Hess Corporation, an oil and gas company, in New York. The university also received $1-million from Roxanne Conisha Bok, a writer, and Scott L. Bok, president of the U.S. branch of Greenhill & Company, an international investment firm, in New York, to renovate a building in the School of Arts and Sciences, and a $1-million pledge from Evelyn Rome Tabas, director of Royal Bancshares of Pennsylvania and Royal Bank America, in Narberth, Pa., to pay for several laboratories in Skirkanich Hall.

Walsh Jesuit High School (Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio): $1-million from Chris Connor, chief executive officer of Sherwin-Williams, a paint manufacturer in Cleveland, and his wife, Sara, for the capital campaign. Mr. Connor graduated from the school in 1974.

World Trade Center Memorial Foundation (New York): $1-million from Robert Wood Johnson IV, owner of the New York Jets football team, to help build a memorial at the World Trade Center site and a museum to honor and share the stories of people who died in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and February 26, 1993. Mr. Johnson serves on the foundation’s board.