A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:
Union College
Rich and Mary Templeton pledged $40 million to support the expansion of programs within the Templeton Institute for Engineering and Computer Science and back a needs-assessment project to determine how to increase the institute’s physical footprint to accommodate more programs and students.
Rich Templeton is chairman and former CEO of Texas Instruments. He joined the company after earning a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Union in 1980. Mary Templeton graduated from Union the same year with a bachelor’s degree in computer science, and worked for General Electric Company for 14 years. The couple met while working at the Rathskeller, a much-beloved eatery located in the basement of Old Chapel, the Schenectady, N.Y., college’s 210-year-old student meeting hall.
Sarasota Memorial Healthcare Foundation
Susan Milman gave $16 million to support the operations of a new outpatient cancer center within the Brian D. Jellison Cancer Institute. The new center will house an expanded breast-health center, outpatient surgery, treatment programs, oncology-physician practices, and integrative care clinics. It will be named the Milman-Kover Cancer Pavilion and is scheduled to open toward the end of 2025. Millman is a commercial real estate investor who gave the cancer institute $5 million in 2020.
Le Moyne College
James and Mary Carroll gave $12 million to back scholarships for students in need of financial assistance who enroll at Le Moyne as humanities and social science majors, and named two professorships: the James J. Carroll ‘66 Endowed Professor in Arts and Sciences, to support scholarship; and the Mary A. Carroll Endowed Professor in Arts and Sciences, to benefit a Jesuit faculty member.
The donation will also be used to support a visiting scholars program and the William J. Bosch, S.J. Teaching and Learning Center. The College of Arts and Sciences will be named for the couple.
James Carroll’s father died two months before he started college, and money was tight. He worked his way through Le Moyne, earning a bachelor’s degree in history and political science in 1966, and taught high school for 12 years. He went on to earn a Ph.D. in social sciences from Syracuse University in 1985. Carroll served as a research associate professor at the university for 37 years and developed Project LEGAL, a national constitutional law project geared toward elementary and secondary American history teachers and their students. He retired in February.
Clark University
Vickie Riccardo and her daughters, Jocelyn Spencer and Alyssa Spencer, pledged $10 million to help the university hire a dean to lead its new School of Climate, Environment, and Society and to launch the Vickie Riccardo Climate Catalyst Fund, to support the school’s growth.
The new climate school is scheduled to open in the fall of 2025. It will bring together scholars from the Graduate School of Geography, the Department of Sustainability and Social Justice, the Department of Economics, the George Perkins Marsh Institute, and the Center for Geospatial Analytics.
Vickie Riccardo is a retired attorney who serves on Clark’s Board of Trustees. Her daughter Alyssa Spencer graduated from Clark in 2017 and now serves as the university’s assistant director of stewardship and donor relations.
Portland State University
Real estate developer and art collector Jordan Schnitzer pledged $10 million through his Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation to back the construction of a new building to house the university’s art and design school. It will be renamed the Schnitzer School of Art + Art History + Design. The money will also support the operations of the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, a free campus art museum that opened in 2019 and was established with a $5 million donation from Schnitzer in 2017.
Schnitzer is directing $5 million of his latest pledge for the construction project, and $4 million to finance the operations of the museum. The remaining $1 million will pay for additional signage, lighting, and outdoor art throughout the university’s campus.
Schnitzer is the son of Portland-area art collector and philanthropist Arlene Schnitzer and her late husband, Harold Schnitzer, who founded the family’s real estate firm, now called Schnitzer Properties, in 1950. Jordan Schnitzer leads the company today. The family’s ties to Portland go back to 1905, when Jordan Schnitzer’s grandparents, Sam and Rose Schnitzer, settled there after immigrating from Ukraine.
Binghamton University
Thomas Secunda pledged $5 million to back the university’s participation in the Empire AI Consortium, an effort proposed by New York Governor Kathy Hochul to establish an advanced AI computing center in Buffalo, N.Y. Researchers from the State University of New York (including Binghamton), the City University of New York, Columbia University, Cornell University, New York University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and the Flatiron Institute will collaborate through the center to develop and promote responsible artificial intelligence tools aimed at creating jobs and improving the lives of New York state residents.
Secunda co-founded Bloomberg LP, where he serves as vice chairman. He built the financial services and media company’s lucrative terminal business. A Binghamton University alumnus, Secunda earned a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in mathematics there in 1976 and 1979, respectively. His donation is contingent upon the passage of Empire AI in the 2025 New York state budget.
To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated regularly.
