A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:
Western Michigan University Foundation
Two anonymous donors pledged $550 million and directed that $300 million of the total go to the Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine, where it will support scholarships; research; and diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts within the medical school. The donors have earmarked $200 million of the total to expand financial-aid packages for WMU students, back career-related and mental-health programs, and hire more faculty. They have designated the remaining $50 million to support the athletics department.
This isn’t the university’s first nine-figure donation from a wealthy anonymous donor. In 2011, an unnamed donor gave $100 million to the medical school, and then in 2014, university officials revealed that the donor was Ronda Stryker, a billionaire heiress. The medical school was then named for Stryker’s grandfather Homer, a surgeon who founded a medical-device manufacturer that is the source of the Stryker family’s vast wealth.
A university official declined to disclose to the Chronicle any identifying information about the donors of the $550 million pledge other than that they are “graduates” of the university and that it was unclear whether the donors’ names would be revealed in the future.
The official also declined to comment on whether the donation is from Stryker, who earned a master’s degree from the university, and her husband, William Johnston, who earned a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from the university. Forbes estimates Ronda Stryker’s net worth stands at nearly $7 billion.
University of California at Berkeley
Three donors gave a total of $75 million — $25 million from each donor — to support construction of the Gateway, the future home for the university’s Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society; and to create two new faculty positions in computer science.
Two of the gifts are from Berkeley faculty: Scott Shenker is a professor of computer science and serves as a research director at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, Calif. Ion Stoica, also a professor of computer science, co-founded Databricks, a computer-software company. The third $25 million gift is from an anonymous donor.
The new building is scheduled to open in 2025 and will provide 380,000 square feet of space for research programs, academic courses, and administrative offices.
Tel Aviv Museum of Art
John Paulson donated $15 million through his Paulson Family Foundation to support upgrades of the museum’s main building and to expand museum programming, install environmentally efficient infrastructure systems, and create an endowment that will enable the museum to continue to upgrade and care for the building.
Paulson founded and leads Paulson & Company, a hedge fund in New York. He is a longtime donor and has appeared on the Chronicle’s annual Philanthropy 50 list of the biggest donors in 2009, 2012, and 2015.
Florida Atlantic University
David Nicholson gave $10 million through his Stiles-Nicholson Foundation to back construction of a new neuroscience building, which will be named the Stiles-Nicholson Brain Institute, and to support the institute’s ASCEND (Advancing STEM Community Engagement through Neuroscience Discovery) Program.
The money will also be used to establish the David J.S. Nicholson Distinguished Professorship in Neuroscience, the David and Lynn Nicholson Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research, and a program for middle- and high-school teachers and students called the Stiles-Nicholson STEM Teacher Academy.
Nicholson founded three hedge funds— Targat Associates, Alpha Max, and Global Max — and an investment firm in Jupiter, Fla., called York Management and Research. He worked as an engineer for computing giant IBM, and for Weyerhauser, a timber company, earlier in his career.
University Hospitals
Monte and Usha Ahuja donated more than $10 million to support Rainbow Babies & Children’s Center for Women and Children. The Cleveland medical center will be named for the Ahuja family. Part of the donation will also be used to establish the Monte and Usha Ahuja Chair in Clinical Excellence.
Monte Ahuja founded Transtar Industries, an automobile-parts manufacturing company in Cleveland. Usha Ahuja previously taught mathematics at Cleveland State University. The couple gave University Hospitals $30 million in 2006 for an expansion project.
Case Western Reserve University
John and Catherine Seibyl pledged $7.5 million to support neurodegenerative-disease research and related programs in both the School of Medicine and the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing. Of the total, $2.5 million will go toward the John and Catherine Seibyl Fund for Neurodegeneration Innovation in Research, Care and Education.
In addition, $2 million will back the John Seibyl, M.D., Professorship in Neurodegenerative Research within the School of Medicine; another $2 million will support the Catherine Seibyl, B.S.N., M.S.N., M.P.H., Professorship in Nursing, Research and Caregiving; and $1 million will be used to establish two endowed funds — the John Seibyl, M.D., Fellowship in the medical school and the Catherine Seibyl, B.S.N., M.S.N., M.P.H., Fellowship at the nursing school.
John Seibyl served as chief of the nuclear medicine section at Yale University’s School of Medicine, and he co-founded the Institute for Neurodegenerative Disorders and a company called Molecular Neuroimaging (now Invicro). He earned his medical degree at Case in 1986.
Catherine Seibyl is a former pediatric nurse-practitioner and oversaw the evaluation of residential treatment programs for veterans with mental illnesses. She earned a bachelor’s degree and a nursing degree at Case in 1977, and 1981, respectively.
University of the Virgin Islands
Donald Sussman gave $6 million to establish the S. Donald Sussman School of Medicine, which university officials say is the first new historically Black college and university medical school to be established since 1975, and the only public HBCU medical school in the United States.
The medical school will have facilities on each of the three islands — St. John, St. Croix, and St. Thomas — and partner with medical institutions on the islands.
Sussman founded Paloma Partners, a hedge fund in Greenwich, Conn. He owns a home on St. John and served on the university’s Board of Trustees from 2008 to 2012.
To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated regularly.
