A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:
Abilene Christian University
Kay Onstead has given $25 million to endow the Robert and Kay Onstead College of Science and Engineering, which the university in Texas has renamed for the donor and her late husband. The gift will back scholarships, a fund for the college’s dean, faculty recruitment and retention, and research.
Though they never attended the university, the couple have given it a lifetime total of $59 million. The Onsteads initially became donors after befriending some alumni through their church early in their marriage. Three of their children and five of their grandchildren have since graduated from there.
Robert Onstead served as a university trustee from 1978 until his death in 2004. He was the co-founder and CEO of Randalls Food Markets, a chain of supermarkets in Houston.
Florida Atlantic University
The university in Boca Raton has received $11.5 million from Ann and John Wood through their FairfaxWood Scholarship Foundation for research on amyloidosis at the Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine. The couple said in a statement that their family has been touched by amyloidosis, a serious illness that affects the brain, heart, kidneys, and liver.
In 1965, the Woods founded Pres-T-Con Ltd., a construction and concrete company in Trinidad that built bridges, piers, and cruise-ship terminals throughout the Caribbean. They sold the company in 2005 and have lived in Boca Raton since 1983.
Duke University
Lisa and Robert Margolis gave $10 million through their Robert and Lisa Margolis Family Foundation to continue the work of the Margolis Center for Health Policy, which the couple established with an initial gift of $16.5 million in 2016. The new gift will endow the center for biomedical research, health equity, and the education of health-policy leaders, and match gifts from other donors to create additional endowments there.
Robert Margolis retired as managing partner and CEO of HealthCare Partners, a medical group and management-services organization. He earned his medical degree from Duke in 1971.
Northwell Health
Debby and Scott Rechler donated $10 million to create the Scott and Debby Rechler Center for Health Outcomes within the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research’s Institute of Health System Science.
The gift will help develop tools that use large-scale data models and artificial intelligence to identify and address equity disparities in health care and patient risk factors. It will also endow a professorship in health outcomes at the center.
Scott Rechler is the CEO and chairman of RXR, a New York company that owns, develops, and manages real estate and infrastructure across the United States. He is also co-chair of the Feinstein Institutes’ Board of Directors.
SPCA of Wake County
Susan Ward gave $5 million toward the animal shelter’s capital campaign to build its Regional Campus for Pets and People.
The new facility will house its pet-adoption services, a spay and neuter clinic, and a new education center for pet owners in Raleigh, N.C. It will be named after the donor and her late husband, Randall, who died in 2021 at age 75. He was the former owner of This End Up Furniture Co.
Susan Ward is a retired artist and animal-rights activist who serves on the Board of Directors of North Carolina State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. She and her husband adopted one of their cats from the shelter after the SPCA rescued it from a neglectful home several years ago.
North Valley Community Foundation
The community fund in Chico, Calif., has received a bequest of $1.7 million from Donna Murrill to support its wildfire-recovery efforts.
Murrill worked for 35 years in the Butte County Health Department, where she supervised testing efforts to manage several public-health threats, including rabies, Lyme disease, and tuberculosis. During the Camp Fire and its aftermath in 2018, she had to evacuate twice from her home in Durham, Calif.: once when the fire approached her neighborhood, then again a month later during flash flooding in the Butte Creek. She died in 2022 at age 83.
University of California at San Diego
Eugene Jhong donated $1.5 million to create a new research program through the university’s Psychedelic and Health Research Initiative. The gift will back studies of DMT, a psychedelic compound typically consumed on its own or through the ceremonial tea ayahuasca, as a treatment for psychological problems like depression and addiction and to promote emotional well-being.
Jhong is a tech investor in San Francisco and the former director of software development at Google.
Daniel Boone Regional Library Foundation
Helen Janet Forsee left $1.1 million to support the Callaway County Public Library in Fulton, Mo., where she was a longtime patron.
Forsee, who died last year at the age of 88, was a homemaker who previously worked at the International Shoe Company for 10 years. Her bequest will be used to add to the library’s collections, upgrade technology and community spaces, and bolster programs and capital projects.
To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated throughout the week.
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