U. of Wisconsin Receives $31-Million; Other Gifts

Two universities and several other groups have received large gifts:

• The University of Wisconsin at Madison has received $31-million from Tashia F. Morgridge and her husband, John, president and chief executive officer of Cisco Systems, in San Jose, Calif., for the School of Education. The money will be used to renovate and expand the 104-year-old building that houses the school, including restoration of its Beaux Arts architectural features. In 1955 Ms. Morgridge graduated from the School of Education and her husband graduated from the School of Business.
• Louise Wheelock Willson, whose family founded Pioneer Hi-Bred International, a seed-producing company in Des Moines that was bought by DuPont in 1999, has left bequests totaling $21-million to 12 organizations. Ms. Willson, who died in April, left $5-million to the Nutmeg Ballet, in Torrington, Conn.; $3-million each to the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts, in Hartford, Conn., and the Madeira School, in McLean, Va., from which she graduated in 1948; and $2-million to the New Britain Museum of American Art, in Connecticut. The following groups each received $1-million: the Connecticut Opera Association, in Hartford; Hartford Hospital; the Hartford Stage Company; the Hartford Symphony Orchestra; the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, in Norfolk, Conn.; Westminster School, in Simsbury, Conn.; the Warner Theatre, in Torrington, Conn.; and the White Memorial Conservation Center, in Litchfield, Conn. Ms. Willson’s gifts were unrestricted and all the groups say they have not yet decided what to do with the funds.
• Marquette University, in Milwaukee, has received $18-million from the estate of Helen Way Klingler, daughter of Sylvester B. Way, a former chairman of the Wisconsin Electric Power Company, to establish a research fund for faculty members. Ms. Klingler died in January at age 101 and had given more than $15-million to Marquette during her lifetime. Although she did not attend the university, she was a friend of Father John Raynor, a former president of Marquette.

Other recent gifts:

Beloit College (Wis.): $1.5-million pledge from Matthew Marvin, a 1937 graduate of the college who owned a real-estate company in Freeport, Ill., to endow the position of athletics director.

Mount Olive College (N.C.): $5-million pledge from an anonymous donor, for scholarships.

New America Foundation (Washington): $5-million from Bernard L. Schwartz, chairman and chief executive officer of Loral Space & Communications (New York), for the national fellows program.

Planned Parenthood Federation of America (New York): $1,467,000 bequest from an anonymous donor, for general support.

Santa Clara U. (Calif.): $1.3-million from John and Susan Ocampo of Los Altos Hills, Calif., co-founders of Sirenza Microdevices (Broomfield, Colo.), to create a center for nanostructures. Mr. Ocampo received a degree in electrical engineering from the university in 1979.

St. Margaret’s-McTernan School (Waterbury, Conn.): $3.5-million unrestricted bequest from Miriam Noble Camp, whose husband, Orton, owned Platt Brothers and Company (Waterbury). Mrs. Camp died in 2003 at the age of 102.

U. of Oregon (Eugene): $1.4-million from Mary Corrigan Solari, a 1946 graduate of the university, and her husband, Richard, retired president and chief executive officer of Granite Construction Company (Watsonville, Calif.), to endow a historian-archivist position in the university’s archives.

U. of Texas at Dallas: $1-million from Nancy B. Hamon, wife of the late Jake Hamon, founder of Hamon Oil Company (Dallas), to endow a chair in aesthetic studies.