Harvard Receives $100 Million to Relocate Its American Repertory Theater: Gifts Roundup

A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle.

Harvard University

David and Stacey Goel have donated $100 million to help relocate the American Repertory Theater, or ART, and fund research. ART has been the professional theater housed by Harvard in Cambridge since its founding in 1980. The goal is to move it to Boston, although the university did not detail a timeline or price tag for the project.

David is co-founder and managing general partner of Waltham-based Matrix Capital Management Co., a hedge fund. His wife, Stacey, said in a statement that their gift is intended to honor David’s parents, “whose love, mentorship, and sacrifice” made his education possible. David graduated from Harvard with a bachelor’s degree in 1993.

Georgetown University

Patricia and Jon Baker donated $20 million to establish the Baker Trust. The Trust’s work will begin in the spring and will work with all the schools on the main campus. The funds will support internships, research, fieldwork, and other kinds of personal and professional development.

Patricia Baker, now a member of the Board of Regents, co-chairs a committee on Georgetown Learning Initiatives. Jon is a 1964 alumnus of Georgetown College, former member of the Georgetown Board of Regents, and 1991 recipient of the John Carroll Award, the highest university honor bestowed on alumni.

Loyola University Chicago

Robert and Elizabeth Parkinson gave $20 million to help create a new School of Health Sciences and Public Health in their honor. Funds from this gift will be allocated to the dean’s endowment for strategic initiatives, student scholarships, and the creation of the Center for Health Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

Pomona College

Janet Inskeep Benton donated $15 million for a new art museum at the college. The new building, to open in 2020 and be named in her honor, will replace the existing museum of art.

Benton graduated with a bachelor’s in history in 1979 and is a current trustee. She received her MBA from Harvard Business School. After working in product management at General Foods Corp. in the mid-1980s, she left the work force and served on various nonprofit boards in Westchester County in New York. Benton founded the Frog Rock Foundation, which focuses on poor children.

Washington University in St. Louis

Philip and Sima Needleman pledged $15 million for the School of Medicine to support two research centers. The Philip and Sima Needleman Center for Autophagy Therapeutics and Research will be established with $10 million. Autophagy is a cellular- waste-recycling system related to aging, infections, inflammatory diseases, obesity, diabetes, atherosclerosis, and cancer. Also, $5 million will fund the new Philip and Sima Needleman Center for Neurometabolism and Axonal Therapeutics to study how the body burns energy.

Philip came to Washington University in 1964 as a postdoctoral fellow and later joined the faculty of the Department of Pharmacology. He headed the Department of Pharmacology from 1976 to 1989. Sima, a social worker, was employed at the former Jewish Hospital of St. Louis and has been a key volunteer leader at the Brown School, which she received her master’s degree.

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

An anonymous $15 million bequest will support facilities, equipment, research, and scholarships. It is the third-largest donation in the university’s history.

Private support at the university has risen, said one official in a news release. The Chronicle’s Philanthropy 50 report highlights a recent $40 million gift for the school of business.

Carnegie Mellon University

Trustee and alumnus David Coulter and Susan Coulter have made a $10 million gift to support the Department of Mechanical Engineering. A news release said inspiration for the gift began on the Coulters’ ranch in Montana, where David saw the need for workers with high-tech skills to operate agriculture machinery.

South Shore Health

John and Eilene Grayken donated $10 million, the largest private gift in the organization’s 97-year history. The gift will go toward substance-use disorders and behavioral-health services and initiatives.

The Graykens’ gift is part of a capital campaign to raise $70 million by 2022, which will mark the hospital’s centennial.

Miss Hall’s School

Alumna Theresa S. Thompson, class of 1964, donated $5 million to the school, its largest gift ever. The contribution will go toward recruiting and retaining faculty as well as fostering its girl-centered curriculum.

MHS was founded in 1898, enrolls 218 girls, and employs 38 full- and part-time faculty. Thompson is a member of the school’s emeritus trustee advisory council.

Jesuit High School of New Orleans

Gayle Benson, through her charitable foundation, pledged $5 million to the school. Also, an anonymous challenge pledge will add $5 million when the school’s campaign reaches $25 million.

School officials announced that the school’s gym will be known as the Gayle and Tom Benson Arena. Tom Benson, who died last March, was the owner of the New Orleans Saints football team from 1985 to 2018 and the New Orleans Pelicans basketball team from 2012 to 2018. Since Tom’s death, Gayle became the first woman to be the majority shareholder of voting stock in an NFL and NBA franchise.

Bryn Mawr College

Betsy Zubrow Cohen donated $5 million to the college for data science. She graduated from the college with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy in 1963. She later founded Jefferson Bank in 1974 and served as CEO of it and its holding company, JeffBanks, until 1999. She also taught at Rutgers University Law School, making her the second female law professor on the East Coast after Ruth Bader Ginsburg; and she created Bancorp, an online commercial bank.

Cohen currently serves as chairman of the board of FinTech Acquisition Corp., where she focuses on technology innovation in the financial services industry. She has also served on a variety of philanthropic and corporate boards, including Aetna, Asia Society, the Brookings Institution, and the Metropolitan Opera.

Muny

Barbara and Andrew Taylor gave $4 million to the St. Louis Municipal Opera Theatre in honor of Allison Broadhurst, their great niece, who is a Muny student and began performing in 2011. The gift will help renovate the its west platform.

St. Joseph’s Academy

Barbara Weidert’s estate donated $3.5 million to the school in St. Louis, its largest ever. The unrestricted gift will help jump-start plans to renovate and upgrade STEM-related and visual-arts instructional areas and to create more scholarships.

Weidert is a 1947 graduate of the women’s college preparatory school.

Vanderbilt University

Cal Turner, through the Cal Turner Family Foundation, announced a gift of $2 million to expand the Turner Family Center for Social Ventures at the university. The center, which is housed within the Owen Graduate School of Management, is a student-driven interdisciplinary organization focused on entrepreneurship and addressing global poverty.

Turner is a 1962 Vanderbilt graduate, and former CEO, chairman, and president of Dollar General Corp.

Akron Zoo

An anonymous donor gave $1.5 million for the zoo’s ROAR capital campaign, the largest donation in the zoo’s history. The contribution will support the zoo’s expansion by creating new areas for animals native to Africa and Asia. The zoo, so far, has raised $4.8 million, or 80 percent of its $6 million campaign goal.

New England Historic Genealogical Society

Novelists Stephen King and Tabitha King gave $1.25 million through their foundation to the nation’s oldest and largest genealogical society. The gift will help expand its headquarters, develop educational programming, and fund curriculum in family history for public school students. Stephen, the author of horror novels said on Twitter that the gift was Tabitha’s idea.

Butler University

Sean and Erin McGould donated $1 million to the university to name the investment room in the new school of business, which will open in the fall. The McGould Investment Room will have several Bloomberg terminals and space for a student-managed investment fund to handle a portfolio worth $3 million.

Sean graduated from the school in 1989 with a bachelor’s degree in accounting. He is currently CEO of Lighthouse Investment Partners in Florida. Erin graduated in 1993 from the Jordan College of the Arts.

To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated throughout the week.