A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:
Illinois Institute of Technology
Three couples — Mike and Elizabeth Galvin, Craig and Janet Duchossois, and John and Jeanne Rowe — gave a combined $80 million to support scholarships and new building projects.
Mike Galvin, a Washington investor, and his wife, Elizabeth, gave $40 million toward the effort, while the Duchossoises and the Rowes donated $20 million apiece, according to a university spokesman.
Craig Duchossois is chairman of the family’s Duchossois Group, a holding company in Chicago, and John Rowe formerly led the Exelon Corporation, an energy company headquartered in Chicago.
Pepperdine School of Law
Rick and Tina Caruso pledged $50 million through the Caruso Family Foundation to expand educational opportunities for underserved students and back several academic programs. The school will be renamed the Rick J. Caruso School of Law.
In addition to the money, Rick Caruso will help the law school raise an additional $50 million from other donors to endow the law school.
Rick Caruso started his career as a real-estate lawyer. In 1987 he founded Caruso, a Los Angeles commercial real-estate firm. He earned a JD degree from the law school in 1983. He served as president of the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners from 2001 to 2006.
University of Texas at Austin
Lorraine (Casey) Stengl left $38.6 million to support the Stengl-Wyer Endowment in the College of Natural Sciences and to back programs in the Department of Integrative Biology.
Stengl, who died in 2017, was a family physician in El Campo, Tex. She invested in real estate and the stock market during her lifetime and donated much of her wealth to the university over nearly four decades. She earned undergraduate degrees in chemistry and education at the university in 1939.
In 1991, Stengl and her partner, Lorraine Wyer, donated more than 200 acres of Smithville, Tex., ranch land to the university to create the Stengl Lost Pines Biological Station where today students and faculty study long-term ecological patterns among diverse species of plants and animals. In 2015, the couple donated an additional 600 acres to expand the site, which is supported by the Stengl-Wyer Endowment.
Michigan State University College of Human Medicine
Doug Meijer donated $19.5 million through the Meijer Foundation to establish a theranostics clinic. The building that houses the clinic will be named for Meijer, who is a former co-chairman of the Meijer supermarket chain in Walker, Mich., which his family founded in 1934.
Greenwich Country Day School
Twin brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss gave $10 million ($5 million apiece) to help pay for a project for a new building and other programs, including a performance space that will be named for the donors’ late sister, Amanda Gesine Winklevoss, who graduated from the private school in 1994. She died in 2002.
The brothers invest in emerging-technology start-ups, and in 2014 they founded Winkdex, a financial index that tracks the price of Bitcoin. They are best known for co-founding ConnectU, a Harvard University-centered social-networking website. They later sued Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for taking their ConnectU idea to create Facebook in 2004. In 2008, the brothers settled for $65 million in a lawsuit they filed against Zuckerberg.
They graduated from Greenwich Day in 1997 and represent the United States in the men’s pair rowing event at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Albion College
Sarah and Alexander Cutler donated $8 million to create the Sarah S. and Alexander M. Cutler Center for Student Success and Academic Achievement, which will provide mentoring and advising for underrepresented, first-generation college students.
Alexander Cutler retired as chairman and CEO of Eaton Corporation, an international electrical-systems management company, in 2016. Sarah Cutler earned an English degree from Albion in 1975.
Drake University
Paul and Claudia Schickler donated $5 million. Of the total, $3 million will go toward athletics, and the donors have stipulated that the remaining $2 million be used for programs within Drake Law School’s Agricultural Law Center that are working to address social, economic, development, and conservation challenges facing rural America.
Paul Schickler is a former president of DuPont Pioneer, a seed genetics division of DuPont. He served in the role from 2007 to 2017. He earned a bachelor of science in management and an MBA from Drake.
First Draft
Craig Newmark gave $1.5 million through his Craig Newmark Philanthropies to help the journalism nonprofit establish CrossCheck, a nationwide program that will train newsrooms how to verify and investigate online content such as manipulated images, leaked documents, or fake accounts and automated networks.
Newmark founded the online advertising site Craigslist and has given extensively to nonprofits that seek to shore up journalism. He appeared on the Chronicle’s annual Philanthropy 50 list of the biggest donors earlier this year.
To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated throughout the week.
Maria Di Mento directs the annual Philanthropy 50, a comprehensive report on America’s top donors. She writes about wealthy philanthropists, arts organizations, and key trends, among other topics. She recently wrote about a $125 million gift from hedge-fund manager Ken Griffin to a major science museum and a $100 million commitment from Nicole Shanahan for reproductive research and other causes. Email Maria or follow her on Twitter.
