June Sees Historic Gifts At Duke, Cornell, Western Michigan And University of Utah

Four major universities have announced in the past two weeks that they have received historic private gifts.

getty

ADVERTISING

The month of June is not even half over and is already developing into a record month for philanthropy in higher education. Only in the last two weeks have four institutions announced that they have received either record gifts or so-called “transformational” donations totaling almost three quarters of a billion dollars.

Western Michigan University

Start with what Western Michigan University (WMU) called “the greatest public college gift in US history.” The contribution known as Empowering Futures Gift was made by alumni of the university who chose not to be named at this point.

“We call it the Empowering Futures Gift because at its core our donors believe that inclusive education empowers people and communities to create a bright future for all,” said WMU President Edward Montgomery in a university press release.

The donation, which is paid to the University Foundation over ten years, is divided into three parts:

1. $ 200 million for WMU that will be used for a variety of purposes including expanding on-demand grant; paid experiential learning and new support staff for career services; additional funding for mental health and wellness services; and a faculty recruitment initiative to “improve faculty diversity and advance interdisciplinary education and research.”
2. $ 300 million for Western Michigan University’s Homer Stryker MD School of Medicine. These funds will be used for scholarships, research in basic and clinical sciences, and new programs to create a more diverse medical school.
3. $ 50 million for various initiatives in support of WMU’s Bronco Athletics.

University of Utah

On June 11, the University of Utah announced a landmark donation of $ 110 million from the George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Foundation and the Nora Eccles Treadwell Foundation. The gift is intended to make the University of Utah Medical School an elite educational and research institution.

Of this, $ 30 million will be used to build a new state-of-the-art home for the University of Salt Lake City’s medical school. It will be called the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine.

The university will use $ 40 million to build a foundation for student scholarships, faculty recruitment, and the development of innovative medical education programs.

The remaining $ 40 million will be used for heart disease and cardiovascular research.

According to a report in Desert News, President Emerita Ruth Watkins said university leaders turned to the Eccles family with requests for a grand gift to support their medical schools. Then, according to Watkins, “something happened that in my experience just doesn’t happen. Amazingly, the two Eccles Foundations came back to us with the decision to exceed our proposed donation amount. “

ADVERTISING

The final amount of $ 110 million was reportedly selected to reflect a preferred “giving 110%” theme at First Security Bank, which – prior to its merger with Wells Fargo in 2000 – was created by Spencer F. Eccles, a longtime supporter of the university.

Duke University

On June 7, Duke University announced that it had received $ 50 million from the Duke Endowment, a private foundation focused on helping causes in North Carolina and South Carolina. This contribution completed the second half of a $ 100 million investment announced in 2019. It is the greatest award Duke University has ever received.

The funds will be used to further advance the Duke Science and Technology program, which aims to “accelerate and expand the recruitment of new faculties in the fields of science, medicine, technology, engineering and mathematics”.

ADVERTISING

Commenting on the gift, Duke President Vincent Price said, “This extraordinary gift from The Duke Endowment strengthens our university’s position as a destination for extraordinary and visionary faculty in a competitive global marketplace. These scientists will accelerate discovery and collaborative research on our campus and around the world. The next century of Duke will be a century of boundless intellectual curiosity as uniquely talented and creative scientists come together in new ways to ask the toughest questions and try to address the most critical challenges of our time. “

Cornell University

Cornell University announced on June 4 that it had received a donation of US $ 24 million from K. Lisa Yang to support its bioacoustic work. The donation was for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology Center for Conservation Bioacoustics, founded in the 1980s to gather information about ecosystem health and animal communication through sound.

Cornell was a leader in bioacoustics, a combination of biology and acoustics that studies how animals use sound in their environment. It enables researchers to “listen” in habitats to learn how animals react to their environment, including the threats to which they are exposed from both natural and man-made sources.

ADVERTISING

The program is now renamed the K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics in honor of Ms. Yang, a Cornell alum. The donation, the largest in the centre’s history, will be used to advance research, new partnerships and best practices in bioacoustics. In addition, the gift will be used to establish the John W. Fitzpatrick directorship for the center in honor of the long-time director of the laboratory.

“We are living in a hugely exciting time for the kind of critical machine learning-based research that is happening at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology,” said President Martha E. Pollack. “The generous and timely gift from Lisa Yang will enable the Center for Conservation Bioacoustics team to continue doing the kind of high-impact terrestrial, aquatic, and marine bioacoustic research for which it is known.”

__________

With the fiscal year ending in just two weeks, attention will soon turn to how this year fared compared to last year in terms of private donations to colleges. Poll results released earlier this year by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) showed that philanthropic support to U.S. higher education institutions totaled $ 49.50 billion for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2020 – just a fraction of that Reported $ 49.60 billion for FY 2019.

ADVERTISING

source https://collegeeducationnewsllc.com/june-sees-historic-gifts-at-duke-cornell-western-michigan-and-university-of-utah/