Archives — 2007
David Ottaway SIPA International Fellow ’63 GSAS’68 has donated $1 million to the School of International and Public Affairs for student fellowships. The gift will provide full scholarships for two students each year beginning Fall 2008, with special consideration given to members of underrepresented socioeconomic groups.
The Mortimer D. Sackler Foundation has made a $1 million gift to the Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology at the College of Physicians & Surgeons. The Sackler Institute assembles Columbia scientists from different disciplines whose research interests focus on early development and how these relate to the etiology and treatment of psychiatric illness.
The Department of Urology received a $1 million commitment from Edward and Lynn Streim to support renovation of the department’s laboratories in the Black Building.
The Mailman School of Public Health has received a bequest of $20.7 million from beloved alumnus and longtime benefactor Ronald H. Lauterstein PH’58, who passed away in 2006. The gift is one of Columbia’s largest endowment gifts in support of faculty development; a proposal to establish a chair in Mr. Lauterstein’s honor was approved by the University Trustees.
A $2.6 million bequest from Dr. Howard Levene GSAS’47 will be used to establish the Levene Assistant Professorship in Statistics.
Sami W. Mnaymneh CC’81 of Coral Gables, Fla., a managing partner at HIG Capital Management, pledged $1.5 million in support of the Mnaymeneh Professorship in Economics. The remaining $1.5 million needed to endow the position will be provided by the Lenfest Challenge Fund. Mr. Mnaymneh also pledged an additional $500,000 to provide research funding to the chairholder.
Trustees Chairman Bill Campbell CC’62, chairman of the board of Intuit and a former football captain and head football coach for Columbia, has made a $10 million leadership gift to The Columbia Campaign for Athletics: Achieving Excellence. “Columbia University is committed to excellence in all of its programs and departments, including athletics,” said Campbell. “My gift, like the campaign as a whole, is intended to help the athletics program provide the best possible experience for Columbians today and tomorrow.” The Columbia Campaign for Athletics is a $100 million initiative in support of “people, places, and programs.” The gift was announced at the campaign's kickoff event in Low Library on October 12.
Mr. and Mrs. Bernard Brown have pledged $2 million to establish the Shirlee and Bernard Brown Professorship Fund in the Department of Ophthalmology at the College of Physicians and Surgeons. The Fund will support an endowed professorship for the director of the glaucoma program.
University Trustee Kyriakos Tsakopoulos CC’93, president and CEO of KT Communities in Roseville, Calif., has pledged $1 million in support of Columbia’s crew program. The gift will help fund the construction of a new boathouse at the Baker Field Athletics Complex. A four-year member of the crew team while a student, Tsakopoulos previously endowed a professorship in Hellenic Studies as well as a scholarship at Columbia College.
Robert K. Kraft CC’63 has made a $5 million leadership gift to to The Columbia Campaign for Athletics: Achieving Excellence. Kraft, a Trustee Emeritus and former lightweight football player at Columbia, is the owner of the NFL’s New England Patriots and chairman and CEO of the Kraft Group. In recognition of the gift, the playing field at Columbia’s Lawrence A. Wien Stadium at the Baker Field Athletics Complex was named Robert K. Kraft Field. “Robert’s extraordinary gift is a great stride in the continued transformation of our athletics program,” said President Lee C. Bollinger. “We are proud to have his name associated with the field and thank him for his remarkable support of Columbia University.”
The Einhorn Family Charitable Trust has pledged $1.2 million in support of the CUMC Brain-Gut Initiative. This multi-disciplinary research program examines the neurobiological basis of nurture and focuses on developing new treatments for childhood developmental disorders.
The Gatsby Charitable Foundation has pledged $1 million to support faculty recruitment in the areas of neuroscience and psychiatry. The Gatsby Charitable Fund will provide the means for faculty to develop innovative approaches to research on mind, brain and behavior.
The Robert W. Matschullat Family Fund has pledged $2 million to the department of pediatrics, division of infectious diseases, to establish the John M. Driscoll Jr., M.D., and Yvonne T. Driscoll, M.D., Professorship of Pediatrics Fund. The fund will support the division chief.
David H. Koch of Koch Business Holdings in Wichita, Kan., has pledged $1 million to the Paul Marks Scholars Fund at Columbia University Medical Center. The new endowed fund will provide matching funds for academic departments to recruit outstanding young scientists and to retain those who have distinguished themselves as top physician-scientists. Paul Marks Scholars will embody CUMC’s research mission to discover and develop innovative and effective biomedical opportunities in the service of society.
At the conclusion of Fiscal Year 2007, the overall Campaign total had reached almost $2.326 billion. This figure put the Campaign a remarkable $726 million ahead of schedule.
By any measure, the year’s most outstanding gift was from John W. Kluge CC’37, who pledged $400 million for financial aid. Other highlighted gifts came from Trustee Gerry Lenfest LW'58, Arthur J. Samberg BU'67, and Robert Yik-Fong Tam BU'50 and Wun Tsun Tam.
In FY07 Columbia Law School raised more than $37 million to fund seven new professorships, faculty research, financial aid, student loan repayment, public-interest work, and building renovations.
Gifts from Armen Avanessians ENG'83, the Calatrava Family Professorship, and more.
New professorships prompted by the Lenfest Challenge.
A challenge grant from Arthur Samberg BU'67, plus gifts from Russell L. Carson BU'67, Henry R. Kravis BU'69, Leon Cooperman BU'67, and Arnold Chavkin CC'74, BU'77 and Laura Chang BU'77.
Last year GSAPP celebrated its 125th anniversary with more than 300 alumni from the U.S. and six foreign countries as well as faculty, students, and friends.
President Bollinger has named Carol Becker, former dean of faculty and senior vice president for academic affairs at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, as the new dean of SOA.
An anonymous grateful patient made a first-time outright gift of $1 million to establish an unrestricted endowment fund that can be used by the chairman of the Department of Urology to support the priorities of the department.
September saw the launch of the Columbia Campaign for Undergraduate Education, an $865 million effort for undergraduate students and the faculty who teach them.
The Columbia Campaign for Undergraduate Education is an unprecedented $865 million effort in support of undergraduate students and the faculty who teach them. Inspired by alumni commitment, it is the largest campaign of its kind Columbia has ever undertaken.
Imagine hearing that two of your three children won’t live to see age five. That grim prognosis faced John Crowley in 1998, when he learned that daughter Megan and son Patrick both had Pompe disease, a genetic muscle disorder that destroys the ability to walk, eat, and breathe without help. Pompe was so rare that no one had developed effective treatments. Crowley (subject of a new book called The Cure) launched a foundation, a biotech company, and a global search for expert help.
A film studies major (“So I could catch up on the R–rated movies my mother never let me watch”), Christin Leigh Moné ’07CC wrote her senior thesis on how Breakfast at Tiffany’s not only reflected but influenced changing gender roles during the early 1960s. A year–round caller for the College Fund since she was a freshman, Moné says, “I’m on the phone all day, but I have trouble finding time to call my friends back!” She enjoys spreading the word to alumni about the importance of current–use annual fund gifts in strengthening financial aid, academic programs such as the Core Curriculum, and the overall student experience. With no small thanks to Moné and callers like her, College Fund giving from alumni grew by 38 percent from 2002 to 2006—putting the $85 million annual fund goal for 2004 to 2011 well within reach. Here Moné reflects on her college years and what she has learned from all those chats with alumni.
“If you pursue your passion, you’ll be successful financially.” Alexander W. Casdin ’96BUS recalls the words of a guest speaker during his value investing class at Columbia Business School. The speaker was Warren Buffett ’51BUS and the words have resonated with Casdin for over a decade.
In the summer of 1999, the testimony of one white undercover narcotics officer led to the convictions of ten percent of the black population of Tulia, Texas, on drug trafficking charges. Despite a lack of evidence, the defendants received sentences of 20 to 341 years. According to one observer, the court cases unraveled as a riveting legal thriller, resembling a modern–day To Kill a Mockingbird. Theodore Shaw ’79LAW, director–counsel and president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), now oversees the cadre of lawyers who proved that the officer had lied in court and won the Texas governor’s pardon for 35 of the 38 defendants.
“If what people are hearing and reading and seeing isn’t fair and honest and representative of the diversity of society,” says Leo Hindery, Jr., managing partner of InterMedia Partners, “then you can’t trust the decisions they’re going to make. Journalism is of critical importance across all aspects of society—in science and medicine and arts, in business, on the front page and in sports, and in every other arena.”
“The real fun of science isn’t in ‘Here’s what we all know that you should learn,’” chemist Ronald Breslow says. “The part that’s most fascinating is, ‘Here’s what we don’t know but we’d like to work together to figure out.’”
Columbia University Libraries has received a $563,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to fund a three-year pilot project that will award a series of internships to graduate students to collaborate with librarians in the organization and description of primary source collections. The project begins July 2.
The Marriott Family and the Medical Illness Counseling Center have made a pledge of $1.5 million to continue support of the Marriott Mitochondrial Disorders Clinical Research Fund at Columbia University Medical Center.
The fund focuses on genetic and clinical research on mitochondrial diseases.
Leonard Tow GSAS ’52, ’60 and his wife, Claire, pledged $12 million through the Leonard and Claire Tow Charitable Trust to support recruitment, research, and management of the Center for Motor Neuron Biology and Disease. The gift will advance science that is relevant to ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease) or motor neuron biology.
The gift is the largest in Ivy League history, the largest gift to any university solely for financial aid, and the fourth-largest ever to an individual American college or university. In making the gift, Kluge builds on his past support for scholarships that encourage socioeconomic diversity among students.
Columbia University Medical Center will expand its Lieber Center for Schizophrenia Research and launch a new comprehensive psychiatric care clinic at its East 60th Street location thanks to a $9.2 million gift from Stephen and Constance Lieber and the Essel Foundation.
The Graduate School of Journalism announced that it will create a new student center in its building on Columbia's Morningside Campus. The Center was made possible by gifts from Antoinette “Toni” Stabile and the Vincent A. Stabile Foundation—named for her late brother, who earned his master’s degree in industrial and management engineering at Columbia—and Daniel J. Edelman CC’40 JRN’41, the founder and chairman of Daniel J. Edelman, Inc.
The Center, to be known as the Stabile Student Center, will fill the long-acknowledged need for a space where students and faculty can relax and exchange thoughts and ideas about a large variety of topics affecting the profession. In recognition of Mr. Edelman’s generous support, Dean Lemann has proposed to the University Trustees that the space outside the café in the new student center be named Daniel J. Edelman Plaza. The school is committed to raising additional funds to support the project, which also features other naming opportunities.
The brothers—who attended the College together and are members of the Class of 1982 now in its 25th reunion year—joined together to make the gift. The scholarship will help students of limited means who live in or have emigrated from Cuba and other countries in Central and South America. Their motivation: In bringing students to New York, Columbia exposes students to educational opportunities they might not encounter otherwise.
“We emigrated to the United States with our parents, who always emphasized the importance and value of a strong education,” Frank and Victor write. “We were fortunate to have the opportunity to attend Columbia College thanks to their hard work and family sacrifice. It is now our desire to enable students of similar cultural and economic background to have the same educational opportunities that were offered to us. We hope that the recipients of the Scholarship share in our vision of giving back to their communities upon graduation.”
Dan Baker CC’76
Executive Director of Donor Relations
dpb21@columbia.edu
475 Riverside Drive
New York, NY 10115
(212) 870-2406
