Pancreatic Cancer Care and Research Gets Big Boost From $50 Million Gift

A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:

University of Michigan Health Rogel Cancer Center

Richard and Susan Rogel gave $50 million to establish the Rogel and Blondy Center for Pancreatic Cancer, which is being named for Max Rogel and Allen Blondy, Richard and Susan Rogel’s fathers, both of whom died from cancer. The money will be used to support clinical care programs and translational research. Researchers at the new center hope to double the survival rate for pancreatic cancer patients over the next decade.

Richard Rogel founded Preferred Provider Organization of Michigan, a health-insurance plan, and is president of the investment firm Tomay. He graduated from what is now the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan in 1970.

The couple are longtime supporters of the university. They gave $110 million in 2018 to what was renamed the Rogel Cancer Center to advance cancer research and treatment, and in 2013 they donated $50 million to back scholarships for medical-school students; support faculty, students, and programs at the Center for Chinese Studies; and other programs.

The couple have served in leadership roles for the university’s fundraising campaigns over the years, and Richard Rogel is chairman of a national advisory board for the Rogel Cancer Center. With their latest donation, the Rogels have given the university nearly $250 million. They appeared on the Chronicle’s annual Philanthropy 50 list of the biggest donors twice since 2013.

Clark Art Institute

Aso Tavitian left an extensive collection of artworks and $45 million to build a new wing of the museum, which will house the collection and be named for the donor. The money will also endow a curatorial position to oversee the collection and support the collection’s long-term care.

Tavitian served as CEO of Syncsort, an early software development company that played a key role in the then-emerging software industry, from 1975 to 2008, and was the company’s main shareholder during that time.

He became a prolific art collector; the 331 works he has left the museum include art from the Renaissance to the end of the 19th century. He served on the Clark’s Board of Trustees from 2006 to 2012 and remained involved with the museum throughout his lifetime.

Born in Sofia, Bulgaria, of Armenian descent, Tavitian immigrated first to Beirut, Lebanon, where he attended high school and then with the financial help of his English teacher there, Haigazian College. He came to the United States in 1961, winning a scholarship to attend Columbia University. He earned a master’s degree in nuclear engineering in 1965 and pursued a Ph.D. in nuclear physics before going on to co-found Syncsort in 1969. Tavitian died in 2020 at 80.

He launched his Tavitian Foundation in 1995 to support scholarships to students of Armenian and Bulgarian origin, to sponsor projects that focused on the development of the Republic of Armenia, and to support other causes.

University of Washington School of Law

Stanley and Alta Barer left $45 million to expand the Barer Institute for Leadership in Law & Global Development, which they helped to launch with an initial $4 million in 2008. The gift will support the recruitment of more international fellows, increase scholarships, and endow faculty positions.

The institute was created to improve governance and development in low- and lower-middle income countries and countries in political transition. Each year, the institute brings three or four fellows to the university to earn a Master of Laws degree in Sustainable International Development.

Stanley Barer was a well-known Seattle lawyer, who early in his career worked for the late Washington state Sen. Warren G. Magnuson, eventually becoming his chief of staff. The son of immigrants, he grew up in Walla Walla, Wash., and earned a bachelor’s degree from the university and then his Juris Doctor in the early 1960s. He experienced antisemitism and discrimination growing up and early in his career when law firms wouldn’t hire Jewish lawyers.

He went on to serve as the U.S. Senate lawyer for the enactment the 1964 Civil Rights Act, helping to write the legislation, and was instrumental in re-establishing trade with China in 1979 and securing Seattle as a significant port-of-call. Barer served as a University of Washington regent from 2004 to 2012 and as a member of the University of Washington Foundation Board. He died in 2021 at 82.

Alta Barer worked as a flight attendant for two decades, flying military charter flights that took U.S. soldiers to and from battle during the Vietnam War. She later served as principal aide to U.S. Sen. Ernest Hollings. When the Barers relocated to China, she became a chief aide at her husband’s law firm’s Beijing office. She died in 2019 at 73.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Parviz Tayebati gave $20 million to launch a program within the Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing that will support postdoctoral students conducting research on artificial intelligence and its intersection with other fields. The Tayebati Postdoctoral Fellowship Program will focus on A.I. for addressing the most challenging problems in select scientific research areas and on A.I. for music composition and performance.

Tayebati is a venture capital investor in green energy companies. In 1993, he founded Coretek, a company that developed technology for telephone companies to switch calls across fiber-optic cables. He sold the company in 2000 to Nortel for more than $1.4 billion.

Tayebati was born in Azna, Iran, where his father was an oil-field technician. He left Iran months before the 1979 revolution to attend the University of Birmingham, in England, and in 1989 he earned a Ph.D. in in quantum electronics from the University of Southern California. He became a U.S. citizen in 2000.

New York Historical

New York philanthropists Agnes and Oscar Tang gave $20 million to build the Tang Wing for American Democracy, which will house the Academy for American Democracy, new gallery spaces and classrooms, and the American LGBTQ+ Museum. The Tang Wing is schedule to open in 2026.

Agnes Hsu-Tang is a senior research scholar at Columbia University and a distinguished consulting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. She has also served as an adviser to Unesco and to President Obama’s Cultural Property Advisory Committee. 

Oscar Tang co-founded the asset-management firm Reich & Tang in 1970. He also co-founded the Committee of 100, a Chinese American leadership organization that is focused on promoting better relations between the United States and Greater China.

The Tangs have donated extensively to arts and culture groups and to education and they appeared on the Chronicle’s Philanthropy 50 list of the biggest donors when they gave $125 million to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2021. They have long supported New York Historical, donating artworks and sponsoring exhibitions and education programming there. Agnes Hsu-Tang currently serves as chair of the museum’s Board of Trustees.

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