A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:
Mayo Clinic
NVIDIA executive Dwight Diercks and his wife, Dian, gave $20 million to support an array of programs, including the creation of the Heidi Diercks Krause Fund in AI Innovation for Cancer, named in honor of Mr. Diercks’ late sister, who died of cancer in 2022.
The fund will support programs within Mayo’s Generative Artificial Intelligence Program and its Comprehensive Cancer Center aimed at using artificial intelligence to treat cancer. One such effort includes developing advanced A.I. tools to detect early-stage cancers before they get to the stage where they can be diagnosed.
Dwight Diercks is senior vice president for software engineering at NVIDIA, which he joined in 1994, one year after it was founded. NVIDIA is credited with the development of the graphics processing unit, known as GPU, a high-performance processor that is fueling advancements in artificial intelligence.
Baylor Athletics
Texas oil magnate Bob Simpson gave $10 million to back a fundraising campaign and to support improvements to Baylor Ballpark, Baylor University’s baseball stadium, and to establish the Bob R. Simpson Endowed Excellence Fund for Men’s Basketball. The fund will help pay for the basketball team’s travel expenses, equipment, and other needs. University officials plan to name a training center for student athletes in the university’s Paul and Alejandra Foster Pavilion, where the university’s basketball teams hold their games, for Simpson.
Simpson founded the Fort Worth, Texas, oil and gas company MorningStar Partners, now called TXO Partners, in 2010. In 1985, he founded Cross Timbers Oil and Gas Company, which changed its name to XTO Energy in 2001. Simpson sold that company to ExxonMobil in 2009 for about $41 billion. He is a Baylor alumnus who earned a bachelor’s and a master’s degree there in 1970 and 1971, respectively. Simpson owns the largest stake in the Texas Rangers professional baseball team and serves as chairman of its executive committee.
University of Central Florida
Kenneth Dixon pledged $10 million to support the university’s career services and athletics programs. He is directing $5 million of the commitment to expand services at the newly named Kenneth G. Dixon Career Development Center.
The remaining $5 million will support the university’s athletics division transition from the American Athletic Conference to the Big 12, a Division I member of the National Collegiate Athletic Association; and the university’s Kenneth G. Dixon Athletics Village, a facility that houses nutrition and wellness programs and academic services for athletes.
Dixon founded and leads Leland Enterprises, an apartment management company in Kissimmee, Fla. He previously worked as an accountant with the accounting firm Price Waterhouse.
BalletX
Joan DeJean left $7.4 million to support a range of programs at the small, contemporary ballet company in Philadelphia. The company’s leaders told the Philadelphia Inquirer that they plan to use $1 million of the bequest to support operations for the troupe’s next two performing seasons. The rest will establish the Joan DeJean Innovation Fund to support future programs and company needs.
DeJean served as the Trustee Professor of Romance Languages in the School of Arts & Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania from 1988 until she retired in 2021. A noted scholar of 17th- and 18th-century literature, she taught at Princeton and Yale universities earlier in her career and became an important figure in the feminist literary critical movement. She died from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in December at 75.
Phoenix Children’s Hospital Foundation
Jerry and Vicki Moyes gave $5 million to help pay for the construction of a Phoenix Children’s Hospital Arrowhead Campus in Glendale, Ariz. Jerry Moyes founded Swift Transportation, a Phoenix trucking company that merged in 2017 with Knight Transportation. He also owns several other companies, including the charter airline Swift Air and FBO Swift Aviation, and has a controlling stake in SME Steel Contractors and the freight carrier Central Freight Lines.
To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated regularly.
