A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Other Institutions
Larry Leinweber gave a total of $90 million through his Leinweber Foundation to establish Leinweber Institutes for Theoretical Physics at four research universities: the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Chicago, and the University of Michigan. The money will also be used to launch the Leinweber Forum for Theoretical and Quantum Physics at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, N.J.
Of the total, Massachusetts Institute of Technology received $20 million, University of Chicago got $18.4 million, and University of California at Berkeley received $18 million. The University of Michigan and the Institute for Advanced Study received the remaining $33.6 million.
Leinweber founded and led New World Systems Corporation, a Troy, Mich., software company that provides city and county governments with planning and public safety software for 911 dispatch centers, law enforcement, fire departments, and paramedics.
He said in a new release that his donations are aimed at strengthening existing programs at each institution and creating a new model for cross-institutional collaboration. Recipient institutions will work both independently and collaboratively to explore fundamental questions in theoretical physics.
Stonehill College
Tom and Kathleen Bogan gave $15 million to support the construction of a new ice hockey and basketball arena, which will be named the Tom and Kathleen Bogan Arena. Their donation kicks off the college’s fundraising effort to attract gifts from other donors for the new arena.
Tom Bogan earned an accounting degree from Stonehill in 1972 and has been an executive and investor in the software industry for most of his career. He served as CEO at Adaptive Insights, a performance-management software company that was acquired by Workday in 2018 for more than $1.5 billion and then served as vice chairman at Workday until 2022. He previously held executive posts at Citrix Systems, Rational Software, AspenTech, and other software companies.
Houghton University
Beverly and Donald Greene gave $10.4 million to support renovations to the university’s oldest existing residence hall, the 73-year-old Gillette Hall. The donation is a first step in the university’s effort to eventually renovate all its campus residence halls.
The Greenes founded DCG Development, a commercial real estate development company in Clifton Park, N.Y. Beverly Greene graduated from the university in 1956. The Greenes requested that university officials rename the residence hall to its former name, East Hall, once renovations are completed. The building was called East Hall when Beverly Greene lived in the residence hall during her student days.
Ohio State University
Stanley and Joan Ross pledged $10 million to support the new Wexner Medical Center hospital, which is set to open early next year. The 26-story hospital with 820 private rooms is being designed for flexible and team-based care focused on the patient and their family.
Stanley Ross is a retired lawyer and race-car enthusiast who graduated from Ohio State in 1962. The couple have given extensively to the university and have a personal connection to its medical center. Their then-teenage son, Malcolm, received emergency care at the university’s Dodd Hall Rehabilitation Hospital in 1993 after breaking his neck in a racing car accident.
He recovered from the serious injury, and his parents never forgot the care he received. In 2015, they donated $10 million to create the Ross Center for Brain Health and Performance at Ohio State, to honor that care.
Morgan State University
The Washington financier Bill Conway Jr. gave $1 million through his Bedford Falls Foundation DAF to the School of Community Health and Policy’s Department of Nursing to support scholarships for nursing students, academic coaching and career mentoring, and professional development programs for nursing faculty.
Conway co-founded the Washington, D.C., private-equity firm the Carlyle Group, and has given more than $325 million to nursing programs at colleges and universities in the Eastern and mid-Atlantic regions. He told the Chronicle last year that he plans to give much more to nursing in the coming years.
To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated regularly.
