A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:
University of Virginia Darden School of Business
David and Kathleen LaCross gave $57 million to support the business school’s Artificial Intelligence Initiative, which is home to research programs and instruction in artificial intelligence, its ethical implications for management, and the challenges and opportunities A.I. presents for business, society, and human well-being.
David LaCross founded Risk Management Technology, which was acquired by Fair Isaac Companies, a credit-scoring firm, in 1997. He also co-founded Morgan Territory Brewing, a Lafayette, Calif., microbrewery. Earlier in his career, he served as a senior vice president at Bank of America. The couple are UVA alumni. He earned a bachelor’s degree in quantitative methods in 1974 and an MBA from the Darden School in 1978. She earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology in 1976.
The couple are long-time supporters of the university. They pledged $44 million last year to back a range of programs in the business school. They directed $20.5 million of that total toward the construction of new residential housing and $12 million to endow the dean’s chair at Darden. Of the remainder, $5 million went to Darden’s botanical gardens, which were then named for the couple, and the remaining $6.5 million was as a bequest to support what is now, with their latest donation, becoming the Artificial Intelligence Initiative. They appeared on the Chronicle’s annual Philanthropy 50 list for their 2022 donations.
University of Kansas Athletics
Todd Slawson pledged $25 million primarily to support the construction of the Gateway District, a campus area that will act as hub for the university’s athletics department. When it’s completed, the Gateway District will include a renovated football stadium, a hotel, and a conference center. Some of the money will be used to establish the Todd Slawson Athletic Fund, for the support of athletics department programs.
Slawson is president of Slawson Companies, a Wichita, Kan., oil exploration and real-estate development company his father Donald Slawson founded in 1957. Todd Slawson earned a bachelor’s degree in petroleum engineering from the university in 1984. His family has given extensively to the university over the years and his father, grandfather, and great grandfather were all University of Kansas alumni.
Carroll University
Tim and Vivian Sullivan gave $10 million to support the School of Business and the construction of its new building. The business school has been named for the donors.
Tim Sullivan graduated from the university in 1975 and joined Bucyrus International, a Milwaukee company that designed and manufactured mining equipment, in 1976. He left Bucyrus in 1998 but returned in 2000 to become chief operating officer and later president and CEO. He retired in 2010 when the company merged with the large-machinery company Caterpillar.
Cornell University College of Human Ecology
Irwin and Joan Jacobs pledged $10 million to endow a directorship and two postdoctoral fellowships in the Center for Precision Nutrition and Health, which will be named for Joan Jacobs, and to support student and faculty programs. The money will also support the center’s research in the emerging field of precision nutrition, which is the practice of providing tailored dietary recommendations based on a person’s genetics, gut microbes, and other biological, environmental, and social factors.
Joan Jacobs earned a bachelor’s degree in nutrition from the university in 1954 and trained as a dietician. She went on to work for Groton Central Schools, in Groton, N.Y., and later at Boston Lying-in Hospital, now Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Irwin Jacobs co-founded the technology giant Qualcomm in 1985. He was a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of California at San Diego from 1966 to 1972, and during that time he co-founded the Linkabit Corporation, which developed a satellite-encryption device. He earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Cornell in 1956. The couple have given large sums to dozens of nonprofits over the years and have appeared on the Chronicle’s Philanthropy 50 list of the biggest donors 17 times over the last two decades.
New York University Langone Health
Robert and Trudy Gottesman gave $9.8 million to establish the Sala Elbaum Pediatric Research Scholars Program, which will provide early-career clinicians support for intensive, supervised career development guidance in the fields of biomedical, behavioral, or clinical research. The gift will also create the Sala Elbaum Fellowship Endowment Fund, which will back fellowships in the Department of Pediatrics. Sala Bierman Elbaum is Trudy Gottesman’s late mother.
Robert Gottesman is executive chairman and senior managing director of First Manhattan, a financial-services and investment firm in New York that was co-founded by his father, David Gottesman, in 1964. Trudy Gottesman has been a trustee of NYU Langone since 2013 and serves as chairman of Sala Circle, a group of supporters who work to advance the health and well being of children at Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital.
Michigan State University
Alan and Rebecca Ross pledged $7.5 million to support the Alan and Rebecca Ross Exhibition Endowment at the university’s Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum. The couple established the endowment with a $1 million donation in 2014. The university will receive their latest donation as a bequest, but museum officials recognized the gift now by naming one of the museum’s spaces the Alan and Rebecca Ross Education Wing.
The couple are real-estate investors and founded MSUCribs, a management company with a portfolio of student housing in East Lansing, Mich. Alan Ross graduated from MSU’s College of Agriculture and Natural Resources in 1977. He worked in Silicon Valley in the 1980s and then returned to his hometown of Detroit in 1990 and bought Gallagher Fire Equipment, a fire suppression and fire alarm contractor, where he serves as president.
He is chairman of the Board of Trustees of the MSU Broad Art Museum and is a former chairman of the Detroit Institute of Arts. Last year, the Rosses established the Alan and Rebecca Ross DIA Enrichment Fund at the university to strengthen collaborations between the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Department of Art, Art History and Design in MSU’s College of Arts and Letters.
Columbia University
Deborah and Peter Weinberg gave $6.5 million to support a range of programs within the Weinberg Family Cerebral Palsy Center at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. The center is home to research efforts and provides clinical care and education programs for people with cerebral palsy. The money will pay for more clinicians, expand laboratory spaces for translational science, and establish new educational programs for physicians specializing in the practice of cerebral palsy care.
Peter Weinberg is a founding partner of Perella Weinberg Partners, a financial-services firm in New York. The Weinbergs gave Columbia $7 million in 2013 to launch the center. Their son Henry was diagnosed at 3 months old with a rare form of the disease. His parents credit the care he received from Vagelos College doctors with helping him to thrive into adulthood.
To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated regularly.
