U. of Notre Dame Gets $40-Million; Other Gifts

Four institutions have received big gifts:

• John W. Jordan II has donated $40-million to his alma mater, the University of Notre Dame, in Indiana. Mr. Jordan, who said the university could use the gift for any purpose, is the founder of the Jordan Company, a private investment firm in Chicago, and is chairman of Jordan Industries, a holding company also based in Chicago. He is a member of the university’s Board of Trustees.
• The University of Maryland at College Park has received two pledges of $30-million each from A. James Clark and Robert H. Smith, both 1950 graduates of the university. Mr. Clark earmarked his gift to finance scholarships for students attending the engineering school, while Mr. Smith wants his money to support students, faculty members, and academic programs in the business school and the performing-arts center. Mr. Clark is chairman of Clark Enterprises, a holding company in Bethesda, Md. Mr. Smith serves as chairman of Charles E. Smith Commercial Realty, in Washington. Both of the pledges are scheduled to be paid over seven years.
• The Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, has received a pledge of more than $10-million from Roger and Victoria Sant to support research on oceans conducted by the National Museum of Natural History. The money will be used to establish the museum’s first endowed chair in ocean research and to help found the Center for Marine Science at the museum. Mr. Sant is co-founder of the AES Corporation, an international power company, and serves as chairman of the Smithsonian’s executive committee. Ms. Sant is president of the National Gallery of Art and of the Summit Foundation, in Washington, which is the Sants’s family foundation.
• Dickinson College, in Carlisle, Pa., has received an unrestricted bequest of $10-million from Robert and Dorothy Rector that will be used for a new science facility. Dr. Rector, who attended the college, was a surgeon at Chambersburg Hospital, in Pennsylvania, where his wife worked as a nurse. The college expects to receive additional money from the estate in the next few months.

Other recent gifts:

Bangor Theological Seminary (Me.): $1-million bequest from Florence Haynes to expand the student-scholarship program at the seminary, which also has a campus in Portland, Me. Ms. Haynes, of West Medford, Mass., worked at Harvard Medical School, in Boston.

Johns Hopkins U. (Baltimore): $1-million from Joseph W. Cowan, a 1968 graduate of the university, to support lacrosse scholarships and to improve its athletic facilities. The university also received two other large gifts. Ralph S. O’Connor, a former trustee of the university, gave $1-million to support a recreational center. Mr. O’Connor is chairman of Ralph S. O’Connor & Associates, an investment firm in Houston. Clair Zamoiski Segal and Thomas H. Segal, of Baltimore, gave $1-million to set up an endowment at the school of nursing, where they will also establish a doctoral fellowship with an annual gift of $30,000. Ms. Segal is a fund-raising consultant and Mr. Segal is an art dealer.

Multiple Myeloma Research Consortium (New Canaan, Conn.): $1-million from Edward J. and Leslye Phillips to support research on multiple myeloma, a form of blood cancer. Mr. Phillips, who was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2003, is the chief executive officer of Millennium Import, a liquor manufacturer in Minneapolis.

St. Lawrence U. (Canton, N.Y.): $2.5-million pledge from Lawrence J. and Sally A. Winston, of Bonita Springs, Fla., for endowment and to help maintain the university’s student center. Mr. Winston, a 1960 graduate of St. Lawrence, is chair of Distribution Alternatives, a financial-planning and personal-finance business, and serves as chair of the university’s Board of Trustees.

U. of Alabama at Tuscaloosa: $5-million from Mignon C. Smith, of Washington, to establish a chair of integrity in business. Ms. Smith’s father was president and chief executive officer of Avondale Mills, a textile company that has operations in several Southern states.

U. of Arkansas at Fayetteville: $5-million from Ralph E. Martin to endow faculty and student positions within the College of Engineering’s department of chemical engineering. Mr. Martin, who received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in chemical engineering from the university, is the founder of PetroFac, a company in Tyler, Tex., that supplies the hydrocarbon-processing industry.

U. of Dayton (Ohio): $3.8-million bequest from Eileen Sears, who died last year, to augment a scholarship fund that she and her husband, H. Troy Sears, had created. Ms. Sears taught music and education in the Dayton Public Schools and at the University of Dayton. Mr. Sears also taught at the University of Dayton, his alma mater, before working at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, in Ohio.

U. of Florida (Gainesville): $1-million from William R. Hough for a program at the business school that enables students interested in finance to receive a master’s degree in one year. Mr. Hough, a 1948 graduate of the business school, founded William R. Hough & Co., an investment-banking firm in St. Petersburg, Fla., that merged with RBC Dain Rauscher last year.

U. of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (Dallas): $1-million bequest from Ann Eickenroht Miller, a real-estate developer in Texas who died in 2000, for a scholarship fund. The fund will be named after her son, Edmund Eickenroht.

Warner Southern College (Lake Wales, Fla.): $1.3-million from an anonymous donor for student housing.