A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:
Cornell University
Paul Rubacha gave $30 million to establish the Paul Rubacha Department of Real Estate, which will be jointly managed by the College of Architecture, Art and Planning and the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business. Of the total, $25 million will go toward creating the department, and $5 million will be used to attract gifts from other donors in support of the real-estate department.
Paul Rubacha is a partner and co-founder of Ashley Capital, an industrial real-estate-investment company in New York. He earned a bachelor’s degree and an M.B.A. at Cornell in 1972 and 1973, respectively. He said in a news release that the late John Reps, a professor emeritus and former chair of the Department of City and Regional Planning, set him on a path to success in real estate.
Cornell’s existing Baker Program in Real Estate will serve as the new department’s primary professional master’s degree-granting program. Over time, the department will add new academic offerings, including a research-focused master’s and Ph.D. program, and collaborations with Cornell colleges in Ithaca and New York.
Purdue University
John Capaldi left $8.5 million to support the cancer-related research of Philip Low, the university’s Presidential Scholar for Drug Discovery and the Ralph C. Corley Distinguished Professor of Chemistry.
Capaldi was a professor in Purdue’s Department of Psychological Sciences for 42 years; he retired in 2011. He died in 2020 at 92 and left much of his estate, including a Purdue-funded retirement account, to Low’s lab.
After Capaldi lost his only sister to cancer, he told his attorney that when he died, he wanted his remaining assets to support cancer research. His attorney, who had known of Low since high school, recommended supporting Low’s research.
Texas A&M University
Wayne Roberts gave $8 million to support the Aggie Park project, an ongoing effort to renovate an underused 20-acre parcel of land on the university’s campus and develop it into a park with spaces for recreation, entertainment, and studying. The park is scheduled to be completed later this summer.
Roberts has held executive positions at a number of large corporations, including Accenture, Accruent, Dell, Rackspace, and the Trammell Crow Company. He earned a bachelor’s degree and an M.B.A. from the university in 1985 and 1986, respectively.
He gave the gift to commemorate the life of his late wife, Shannon Lia Roberts, a pharmaceutical sales representative with Eli Lilly and Company. Shannon Roberts earned a bachelor’s degree in biomedical science from the university in 1986 and started her career as a pharmacist before going into sales. She died last year after a nearly 30-year battle with brain cancer.
Northwestern University
Patricia Bao gave $5 million to support research and other programs at the Center for Human-Computer Interaction and Design, a collaboration between the university’s McCormick School of Engineering and the School of Communication.
The gift will endow the Bao Family Professorship in Human-Computer Interaction, support the center’s administrative costs, and create an endowed fund to support the center in perpetuity. Launched in 2020, the center brings together researchers and others from across Northwestern to study, design, and develop tools related to human-computer interaction.
Bao is a former UX researcher at Google. She earned a Ph.D. in technology and social behavior from Northwestern in 2013. Darren Gergle, a professor of communication studies and a co-director of the center, was her Ph.D. program adviser. Bao’s husband is the billionaire Tony Xu, the CEO and co-founder of DoorDash, an online food-delivery service.
Georgetown University
Antonio and Sabrina Gracias gave $5 million through their Gracias Family Foundation to create a scholarship fund to support the academic and personal financial needs of Georgetown students affected by the war in Ukraine.
The money is being directed to students who are current or recently displaced residents of Ukraine. It provides scholarships to undergraduate students in financial need and merit-based scholarships to graduate students enrolled in the School of Foreign Service. The gift also provides these students with money to cover course materials, travel, health insurance, room and board, living expenses, and visa expenses.
Antonio Gracias founded Valor Equity Partners, a private-equity firm in Chicago whose investments include Tesla Motors. He served as a director of the automobile company and helped to take it public. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in international finance and economics from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in 1992 and 1993, respectively. Sabrina Kuhl Gracias earned a bachelor’s degree from the university’s McDonough School of Business in 1993.
University of New Haven
Jeffery Hazell pledged $3 million to renovate and expand Charger Gymnasium, which will be renamed the Jeffery P. Hazell Athletic Center. When completed, it will house the men’s and women’s basketball and women’s volleyball teams, as well as host large-scale university and community programs and events.
Hazell founded a seafood wholesaler, Bar Harbor Lobster Company, in 1986 and Boston Lobster Feast, a chain of seafood restaurants in the Orlando, Fla., area, in 1991. He earned a bachelor’s degree in hotel and restaurant management from the university in 1983.
To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated regularly.
