Recent News

Leon Cooperman ’67BUS, chairman and CEO of Omega Advisors and a member of Columbia Business School’s Board of Overseers, has pledged a gift of $25 million to support the construction of the school’s new home in Manhattanville. The gift is the second-largest donation in support of the cutting-edge facilities, which will be part of Columbia University’s expansion just north of its Morningside Heights Campus. More›

Helen Gurley Brown, longtime Cosmopolitan magazine editor and author, has made a $30 million gift to establish the David and Helen Gurley Brown Institute for Media Innovation at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and Stanford University’s School of Engineering.

The Institute and the collaboration between the two schools is designed to encourage and support new endeavors with the potential to inform and entertain in transformative ways. It will recognize the increasingly important connection between journalism and technology, bringing the best from the East and West Coasts.

The Institute, the first of its kind, is inspired by the memory of Ms. Brown’s late husband, David Brown, a graduate of both Stanford University and the Columbia School of Journalism. Of the total gift, each school will receive $12 million for Institute activities. An additional $6 million will go to Columbia which will also pay for the construction of a highly visible signature space, including a state-of-the-art newsroom, in the J-School’s landmark building. More›

The School of Social Work has received a major pledge to endow a new program that will support social policy, program, and administration students in policy internships in the nation's capital. The Fisher-Cummings Washington Fellows Program embraces an evidence-based approach to social policy analysis and promotes an approach that encourages collaboration across institutional and political lines.

The initial commitment of $550,000 was made jointly by Julie F. Cummings ’11SW and her mother, Marjorie S. Fisher, through the Marjorie S. Fisher Fund and Fisher-Cummings Family Fund, both donor-advised funds administered by the Community Foundation of Southeast Michigan. It reflects two generations of deep concern by mother and daughter alike for social justice and their joint commitment to ensuring the well-being of women, children, and families.

The Columbia College Fund has raised $5.8 million from more than 5,900 donors so far this fiscal year, which runs from July 2011 to June 2012. This represents a 4 percent increase in dollars and a 15 percent increase in the number of donors. The fund has also met two key benchmarks: First, the Parents Fund has surpassed the $1 million threshold and is 54 percent ahead of last year's fundraising. Second, participation in the Young Alumni Fund has increased by nearly 90 percent, to 764 donors. Thanks to the hard work of volunteers and the generosity of donors, the College Fund is poised to exceed its FY2012 goals of $16 million and 11,500 donors.

The Wu Family has made a commitment of $10 million toward CUMC's campus revitalization project. Their gift will support the new medical and graduate education building.

• A bequest totaling more than $6.4 million has been directed toward the Department of Ophthalmology’s endowment Fund.

• A donor made a commitment of $2.5 million to fund an endowed professorship in the Department of Pediatrics.

• The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation made a commitment of $1,467,465 to advance research in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology.

• A bequest of $1.456 million will fulfill a pledge to establish a professorship in the Department of Medicine.

A $1 million grant from the JPB Foundation was made to the Department of Neurology to support Dr. David Sulzer’s work in the mechanisms of Parkinson’s disease pathogenesis.

• A bequest of $487,500 will be directed toward the Dean’s Discretionary Fund.

• The Lieber Institute for Brain Development made a gift of $350,000 to the Center for Neurobiology and Behavior to support Dr. Eric Kandel’s neurobiology research.

• The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society made a payment of $312,500 toward its grant to the Institute for Cancer Genetics to advance lymphoma research.

• An estate gift of $275,681 will advance pancreatic cancer research in the Department of Surgery.

• The ALS Therapy Alliance, Inc. made grants totaling $261,000 to advance neuroscience research at Columbia: $150,000 to Dr. Tom Maniatis for his work on the role of FUS/TLS in the regulation of gene expression and $111,000 to Juan Tapia for understanding A connectomics analysis of ALS.

• The Louis and Rachel Rudin Foundation has donated $160,000 to the School of Nursing, allocating $80,000 to the Rudin Oncology Scholarship, $40,000 to the Rudin Undergraduate Nursing Scholarship in Memory of Dean Helen Pettit, and $40,000 in support of the Rudin Undergraduate Nursing Scholarships in Memory of May Rudin.

• A Columbia Nursing graduate has endowed the Anna and Milton Felson Scholarship Fund with a gift of $50,000.

• Additional recent gifts in support of scholarships include $25,000 from the Dr. Scholl Foundation, $20,000 from the Frueauff Foundation, and $15,000 for diverse students from the Sidney and Loretta Teich Foundation.

• The Center for Children and Families received a $10,000 grant from the Viola W. Bernard Foundation.

The estate of Shepard L. Alexander ’21CC has conveyed $1.04 million in endowment support for the Patricia and Shepard Alexander Scholars, a financial-aid fund for Columbia College students.

Mr. Alexander, who died in 2001, and his late wife, Patricia, who died in September 2011, had already given extensively during Mr. Alexander's lifetime and upon his death. They supported numerous programs, especially financial aid, and are also known for establishing Columbia's first coaching endowment, the Patricia and Shepard Alexander Head Coach of Football.

A $4.1 million grant from the IKEA Foundation will support three of five Model Districts in India in partnership with the National Rural Health Mission. The Model Districts are regional pilots that seek to demonstrate that targeted additional expenditures, programmatic innovations, and applied best practices can improve the National Rural Health Mission’s service delivery and efficiency, and maternal and child health outcomes. This is the IKEA Foundation's second grant toward the project; it previously supported the first two Model Districts in 2010.

Dedicated supporters of the Millennium Villages project through its first five years of operation, or Phase I, William and Sue Gross have made an additional unrestricted gift of $2 million to support the Earth Institute’s work to lift rural African communities out of poverty.

These funds are providing vital support toward the advancement of the science, technology and policy work necessary to carry the project through its second five-year phase (Phase II) — bringing the Millennium Villages project ever closer to achieving the Millennium Development goals by 2015.

The Keck Foundation has awarded $1 million to an interdisciplinary group of Columbia University researchers: Dirk Englund in the Department of Electrical Engineering, Jonathan Owen in the Department of Chemistry and Rafa Yuste in the Department of Biological Sciences. The gift supports the project "Watching the Brain at Work: Imaging Neuronal Activity with Diamond Nanoprobes" — a high-risk, high-reward research effort that capitalizes on Columbia’s expertise in both neuroscience and nanoscience.

First Eagle Investment Management, formerly known as Arnhold and S. Bleichroeder, recently pledged $3 million to endow the Jean-Marie Eveillard/First Eagle Investment Management Professorship of Value Investing at Columbia Business School.

The new chair honors Jean-Marie Eveillard for his outstanding contributions to the field of asset management and his dedicated service to First Eagle. It also recognizes his generosity of time, wisdom, and spirit in sharing his knowledge and experience with members of the Business School community. Mr. Eveillard has been involved with the Business School’s Heilbrunn Center for Graham and Dodd Investing for many years as a guest speaker and adjunct faculty member.

Ronald O. Perelman, a member of Columbia Business School’s Board of Overseers, recently made a current-use gift to establish the Ronald O. Perelman Senior Fellowship within the Richard Paul Richman Center for Business, Law, and Public Policy — a partnership between Columbia Business School and Columbia Law School. The inaugural Ronald O. Perelman Senior Fellow is Andy Stern, the former president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and a respected thought leader on issues confronting American workers and the American economy.

The International Fellowship Program, an organization of the Ford Foundation, has given Columbia University Libraries $1 million to archive and provide access to IFP's paper and electronic records.

The foundation created IFP in 2001 to encourage post-graduate opportunities for underserved and marginalized groups around the world. To date, the program has operated out of more than 20 centers on all continents, records from which will comprise the archive along with records of the central administration.

This multi-year project is significant both for its alignment with Columbia's programs in and commitment to global studies and for the fact that it will allow the Libraries to develop the infrastructure needed for electronic archives.

The International College of Oral Implantologists has given $400,000 as part of a $1 million pledge to support the renovation of the Implant Center at the College of Dental Medicine.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation gave a $15 million, five-year grant to the Earth Institute to support scientific research and to create science-based tools and technologies.

The new grant will support the scaling up of Earth Institute projects already underway throughout Africa and other impoverished regions in the world, in addition to the development of new applications. This grant is the second provided by the Gates Foundation; the first, in 2006, helped establish many of the scientific gains and research being practiced today.

Columbia University Trustee Gerry Lenfest ’58LAW, ’09HON, a benefactor whose previous gifts of more than $100 million place him among Columbia’s most generous donors, has pledged $30 million to support the construction of a multi-arts venue on the University’s Manhattanville campus. The gift, announced November 17, is the largest ever made for the arts at Columbia; the new venue will be named the Lenfest Center for the Arts in his honor. More›

Columbia University Libraries' Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library and the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation received an unprecedented $4 million gift from the Durst family, one of New York's most respected commercial and residential real estate families. In conjunction with the gift, the family-owned Durst Organization has also donated the late Seymour Durst’s Old York Library Collection, which includes books and ephemeral materials about New York City, as well as architectural documentation, including renderings, plans, and photos from the Durst Organization Archives. More›

In recognition of the generosity of Ambassador Donald and Vera Blinken, Columbia University has renamed its European Institute as the Donald and Vera Blinken European Institute. The Blinkens’ gifts to European Studies at the University include their recently committed planned gift.

Founded in 1948, the Blinken European Institute is the oldest university center in the United States dedicated to the study of Europe. The Institute, currently led by Victoria de Grazia, Moore Collegiate Professor of History, carries out its mission to promote European studies by conducting its own agenda-setting research projects, promoting teaching, scholarly debates, and public events related to Europe, and hosting scholars and practitioners with European expertise.

When the bequest is realized, the endowment will be dedicated to launching new programming in European studies and public diplomacy, partnering with Columbia’s global initiatives around the world, and providing funding for research, teaching, and public outreach related to the Blinken Institute’s mission, to develop with depth and historical sweep the American-European dialogue around major contemporary issues and foster dedication to public service. It will thus build on the significant gifts that the Blinken family is already making to European studies at Columbia, notably, the annual Vera and Donald Blinken Lecture, whose speakers have included Samantha Power, Joseph Biden, and Richard Holbrooke.

Donald M. Blinken, the U.S. Ambassador to Hungary from 1994 to 1998, graduated from Harvard and co-founded E.M. Warburg, Pincus & Co. In addition to chairing the State University of New York Board of Trustees from 1978-1990, he is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves on the boards of the New York Philharmonic, the Council of American Ambassadors, the National Committee on American Foreign Policy, the Project on Ethnic Relations, and Central European University in Budapest. Vera Blinken, a native of Hungary and a graduate of Vassar College, served as Special Assistant for the Arts and Cultural Affairs to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, founded in 1996 PRIMAVERA, the first mobile breast cancer screening program in Central and Eastern Europe, and in 2002, was awarded the Middle Cross of the Republic of Hungary for services to the Hungarian people. In 2009, with her husband, she co-authored Vera and the Ambassador, a memoir about their diplomatic mission to Hungary from 1994 to 1997.

Dr. Lawrence Nannery ’70GSAS, a scholar and retired professor of philosophy, has set up a gift annuity to benefit the Columbia University Libraries. During his lifetime, Dr. Nannery will receive income from the annuity. After that, remaining assets will establish the endowed Lawrence Nannery Fund to support collections and programs in the Libraries benefitting the humanities.

The Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation has received a $250,000 gift from Audi of America to support a year-long project entitled “Experiments in Motion.” Through a faculty think tank, a series of public events, and three sponsored design studios, students and faculty will develop new paradigms in the relationship between mobility and design.

Columbia Business School has received three commitments totaling $2 million to support the construction of the School’s new facilities, which will be located on the University’s Manhattanville Campus. These include pledges of $1 million from the Penates Foundation and Dr. Paul Montrone ’66BUS; $500,000 from Kikkoman Corporation and Kikkoman chairman Yuzaburo Mogi ’61BUS; and $500,000 from a donor who wishes to remain anonymous. Dr. Montrone and Mr. Mogi are longtime members of the Business School’s Board of Overseers and are actively involved with the organization.

A Business School alumnus who attended the School’s Annual Dinner gala at the Waldorf-Astoria in May 2011 was so moved by the proceedings that he volunteered to match all contributions made toward the event, resulting in a gift of $3.1 million and overall fundraising of $6.2 million—a new record. His extraordinary generosity, like all contributions in support of the event, will help fund student financial aid, faculty research, and curriculum development at the Business School.

In a strong investment year, Columbia reported that it earned 23.6 percent in returns on its endowment in FY11 — tops in the the Ivy League. (In comparison, Yale and Princeton each reported returns of 21.9 percent for FY11, while Harvard earned 21.4 percent.) Columbia’s endowment now stands at $7.8 billion, a net increase of $1.3 billion over last year that also reflects annual distributions and gifts.

As Bloomberg reported on October 13, for the 10 years ending June 30 Columbia’s investments generated an average annual gain of 9.9 percent. Over the same period, Yale’s Ivy-best figure increased 10.1 percent, while Harvard saw gains of 9.4 percent and the S&P 500 just 2.7 percent.

The University’s investment performance has now rivaled those of its closest peers for about a decade, essentially since the Columbia Investment Management Company was established in 2002. More›

A gift from Emmanuel Roman and Barrie Sardoff Roman has enabled the appointment of Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Richard Ford, who will join the School of the Arts faculty in Fall 2012 as the soon-to-be-established Roman Professor of the Humanities and Professor of Writing at Columbia University. Ford will teach in the School's MFA Writing Program.

The Roman chair is the fifth and final faculty position to receive additional endowment support through an earlier gift from the Mellon Foundation.

Patrick McGarrigle ’86CC and Yvette McGarrigle have made a $150,000 gift to endow the Patrick and Yvette McGarrigle Scholarship at Columbia College. The gift was inspired by the occasion of Mr. McGarrigle’s 25th reunion earlier this year.

Charlie Cho ’96CC was similarly inspired — by his 15th reunion, also this year — to donate $150,000 in support of College financial aid.

Thanks to the Scholarships 101 matching program established in partnership with the late John Kluge ’37CC, the initial endowment for these new funds was increased to $300,000 apiece.

Ronnie Planalp ’86BUS, who sits on the advisory board of the Social Enterprise Program at Columbia Business School, and Stephen Trevor ’86CC, a member of the Columbia College Board of Visitors, have donated $250,000 in support of financial aid and other programs. Most significantly, $150,000 of the gift will benefit the Columbia College Fund (creating the Planalp/Trevor Family Scholarship Fund, thanks to a match from the Scholarships 101 Challenge). The gift also provides $50,000 to the Social Enterprise Program Fund and another $50,000 in annual fund gifts to Columbia Athletics, to be divided evenly between fencing and squash.

The Columbia Center for Oral History, a unit of the Columbia University Libraries, has received a two-year, $627,000 grant from the Atlantic Philanthropies to support expansion of its core staffing and project capacity. This funding builds upon a previous grant from the same organization that enabled the Center (formerly known as the Oral History Research Office) to undertake new and innovative projects in the areas of human rights and constitutional freedoms. New work will proceed in the areas of public health, philanthropies, and the arts. More›

Columbia University's Rare Book & Manuscript Library has acquired a comprehensive collection of manuscripts, personal correspondence, and documents from the estate of American psychologist Albert Ellis (1913–2007), founder of the precursor to cognitive behavioral therapy, Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy. More›

A bequest of $20 million from the estate of Judith P. Sulzberger, MD ’49PS, will be directed to the Judith P. Sulzberger Genome Center at the College of Physicians and Surgeons. The gift will support genomics research and further the use of breakthrough technologies to address important problems in biological and biomedical research. Dr. Sulzberger played a leadership role in founding the Columbia Genome Center — since renamed in her honor — as an outgrowth of the National Institute of Health’s Human Genome Initiative.

The Jamie Deutsch Foundation has made a gift of $100,000 to the Hope & Heroes Children’s Cancer Fund, which helps children with cancer and their families by funding the Herbert Irving Child & Adolescent Oncology Center (HICAOC) at Columbia University Medical Center.

The gift will help to support and expand existing programs and therapies, develop new initiatives, and enhance research that is vital to the fight against pediatric cancer. HICAOC is the only pediatric oncology program in the New York area to receive one of 20 Phase I contracts from the National Cancer Institute/ Children’s Oncology Group for clinical trials that investigate novel treatment strategies for patients with relapsed or refractory disease. It is also the only program in New York to participate in TACL (Therapeutic Advances in Childhood Leukemia) and NANT (New Approaches to Neuroblastoma Therapy), two limited, exclusive consortia dedicated to testing new drugs for children.

As part of the newly launched Financial Insights Project, the Citi Foundation will provide up to $25 million over the next five years to leading universities conducting research on issues affecting the financial services landscape in the areas of innovation, technology, globalization and consumer behavior. A consortium of graduate schools at Columbia University is among the recipients of grants for 2011; the consortium, which includes Business and Law, will study the interplay of global and local product innovation, risk management, and regulation in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. More›

Frank Cicero, ’92CC, made a multi-part $500,000 commitment to Columbia Athletics and the College, with $350,000 supporting the Campbell Sports Center planned for Columbia’s Baker Athletics Complex, $100,000 supporting the Columbia College Annual Fund, and $50,000 to the Football program.

Columbia Business School has received a commitment of $2.5 million from Andrew Barth ’83CC, ’85BUS to support the construction of the School’s new facilities, which will be located on the University’s Manhattanville Campus. An active member of the Business School’s Board of Overseers, Barth previously established the Rudolph F. Barth Scholarship Fund and lent his support to the creation of the Robert G. Kirby Professorship of Behavioral Finance, both at the School. In addition, he is a longtime supporter of Columbia College, where he and his wife, Avery, recently endowed a scholarship fund.

Canning and Eliza Fok, parents of a member of the Columbia College Class of 2013, have made an endowment gift of $1 million to support international students attending the College.

Karl G. Homberg ’69BUS has made a donation of almost $950,000 to support the continued development and implementation of a new graduate carbon management program through the Columbia Climate Center at the Earth Institute.

Lisa and David Stanton ’77CC have made a $250,000 pledge to support a scholarship at Columbia College. Longtime supporters of the College, the Stantons are parents of members of the College classes of 2009 and 2011, and members of the school’s Board of Visitors. Their gift qualifies for a 1:1 match through the Scholarships 101 Challenge, a program funded in partnership with the late John Kluge ’37CC, raising its total value to $500,000.

University Trustee Gerry Lenfest ’58LAW, ’09HON has given $500,000 in support of the Campbell Sports Center planned for Baker Athletics Complex.

With $250,000 in funding from the Hawn Foundation, the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning is creating an online professional development companion to MindUP, a PreK-8 social and emotional learning curriculum recently published by Scholastic, Inc. MindUP skills, including focused attention and non-reactive monitoring of experience from moment to moment, create the potential for long-term impact on brain function and social and emotional behavior of children.

Produced in partnership with faculty at Teachers College and Columbia, the online curriculum will be used to train teachers in the MindUP program starting in the fall of 2011. The HuffPost Living blog recently released an interview of Goldie Hawn by Marianne Schall, where Ms. Hawn discusses the MindUP program. More›

The Louis and Rachel Rudin Foundation has donated $120,000 to the School of Nursing, designating $40,000 apiece for scholarships in memory of both Dean Helen Pettit and May Rudin, for the benefit of nursing students in the Combined BS/MS Entry to Practice program for college graduates who have already earned a BA. The remaining $40,000 will support scholarships for nursing students who specialize in oncology.

The LCU Foundation has donated $35,000 to provide housing stipends for selected students at the School of Nursing.

The GE Foundation has made a pair of $3.2 million grants to the Mailman School of Public Health to extend the Systems Improvement at District Hospitals and Regional Training of Emergency Care program — known as sidHARTe — in Ghana and initiate the program in Rwanda. The second-phase program in Ghana calls for partnerships with local institutions to generate tools and implement best practices to improve care for acutely ill patients in rural hospital settings. The first-phase program in Rwanda will work with the national ministry of health and local institutions to realize a sustainable national task force for emergency care and prevention that is appropriate for that nation. A final grant from the GE Foundation provides $99,000 to study treatment of children with respiratory distress in Ghana. The primary investigator on all three grants is Dr. Rachel Moresky, assistant clinical professor of medicine and public health.

Andrew Barth ’83CC, ’85BUS and Avery Barth have donated $1 million to endow the Andrew and Avery Barth Scholarship at Columbia College. Longtime supporters of the University, the Barths have previously given in support of the College, the Business School and Columbia’s wrestling program. The newly endowed fund will receive an additional $2 million through the Scholarships 101 Challenge, a program in partnership with the late John W. Kluge ’37CC, ’88HON.

The Columbia College Fund already has raised $7.5 million this fiscal year, putting it ahead of its progress to the same point last year. Thanks to the hard work of volunteers and the generosity of donors, the Fund is poised to exceed its FY2011 goal of $14.5 million. In reunion-year fundraising, the Class of 1991 has already surpassed its dollar goal for its 20th reunion with more than $160,000 in gifts and pledges, while the Class of 1971 has raised $700,000 toward its $1 million goal.

William Strong has made a gift of approximately $2 million in support of financial aid for international students at the School of General Studies. It is his second such recent donation, bringing his total contribution to $4.2 million in just six months. “Because this gift will help us to increase the number of international students in the undergraduate population, it will be transformative not only for General Studies but also for the entire undergraduate program at Columbia,” said Peter Awn, dean of the School. “I am moved by Bill’s generosity and desire to make a difference in students’ lives.”

Karen Lerner, parent of a student at the School of General Studies, has made a $150,000 gift to establish an endowed scholarship fund at the School. Under the terms of the General Studies Scholars Match, the newly created scholarship fund will receive an additional $150,000 of support. With a total value of $300,000, the endowment will generate approximately $15,000 per year in support of financial aid.

The Max Abramson Collection Fund has been established in memory of Max Abramson by his son and daughter-in-law Shelley and Elliott Abramson ’60CC and the Kenneth A. Lattman Foundation. Max Abramson emigrated from Kovno, Russia, in 1900 as a 14-year-old. In perpetual memory of his heritage and culture, the fund will support collection activities in Jewish Studies.

The Ardie S. Myers Collection Fund has been established by Ardie Myers ’71LS [Library Service] to support African American collections. Ardie said she values her Columbia education so much that she wanted to do something to benefit current and future students attending Columbia. By creating an endowed acquisition fund at the library, she is happily helping students and honoring her heritage while also supporting the Libraries where she spent a great deal of time as a student.

The Libraries’ collections form the backbone of its support of faculty and student research and coursework. Endowed collection funds provide a stable and enduring source of funding for acquisitions, enabling the Libraries to acquire important new books and digital resources as they emerge.

Locks of Love, Inc., a Florida-based nonprofit corporation, has made a commitment of $1 million to the Department of Dermatology in support of human clinical trials — under the direction of Dr. Angela Christiano and her team —in the treatment of alopecia areata, an autoimmune disorder that causes abnormal, and often total, hair loss. Alopecia areata affects more than five million Americans, and has no known cause or cure.

This initiative was spearheaded by Locks of Love president Madonna Coffman, a retired cardiac nurse with a great deal of volunteer experience working for not-for-profits in and around Palm Beach, Florida. Locks of Love provides hairpieces to financially disadvantaged children in the United States and Canada who suffer from long-term medical hair loss.

Joseph G. “Jay” Tompkins Jr. ’67BUS has pledged $250,000 to support four initiatives at Columbia Business School. Of the total amount, $10,000 will be allocated to the Linda B. Meehan Scholarship Fund, named in honor of the School’s long-time assistant dean of admissions; $25,000 will be allocated to the Clifford J. Schorer Greenhouse Fund within the Entrepreneurship Program; $107,500 will provide current-use funding for the Center on Japanese Economy and Business; and $107,500 will create a current-use scholarship in Mr. Tompkins’ name to provide need-based financial aid to students who have lived, worked, or studied in East Asia.

Banco Santander has renewed its support of Columbia Business School’s Entrepreneurship and Competitiveness in Latin America (ECLA) program with a pledge of $755,000 over three years. ECLA strives to bridge the gap between academic theory and business practice by equipping Latin American entrepreneurs with the skills, tools, and global mindset to prepare for tomorrow’s changing global environment. The first class of ECLA students graduated in January, and the School was pleased to welcome Banco Santander’s chairman, Emilio Botín for the event. With the ongoing generosity and support of Banco Santander, the School is able to provide a much-needed educational infrastructure in support of Latin America’s aspiring entrepreneurs.

Columbia Business School has received a commitment of $5 million from an anonymous donor to support the construction of the School’s new facilities, which will be located on the University’s Manhattanville Campus. This pledge comes on the heels of the announcement that architectural firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro will design the Business School’s two new buildings.

Columbia University has acquired the archives of the Committee to Protect Journalists. The collection of documents, which spans the organization’s human-rights work since its founding in 1981, includes monitoring and campaign reports, case files, administrative files, photographs, videos, and a vast collection of newspaper clippings.

The archive will be part of Columbia University Libraries’ Center for Human Rights Documentation and Research, created to support and maintain the documentation of social justice worldwide. The collection will be available in the Rare Book & Manuscript Library, housed within Columbia’s Butler Library. These archives will inform research on the development of international reporting and journalism and the nature and form of threats to both individual journalists and press freedom in general. More›

The C.V. Starr East Asian Library has received a donation of over 6,000 Chinese DVD titles from Beauty Media Inc., transforming the Columbia University Libraries’ East Asian film collection into one of the largest in the world. The donated collection — covering feature films, TV series, drama, music, culture, language, ceremony, and martial arts —will provide extensive resources for the study of Chinese film history, a rapidly growing field of cultural research.

"Since its discovery by the West in the Eighties, Chinese film history has been one of the most remarkable and most active areas for film and cultural scholars," said Richard Pena, a professor of film studies and program director for the Film Society of Lincoln Center. More›

David Barry '87CC and Michael Barry '89CC, brothers and former Columbia wrestlers, will establish a new endowment to support the new Michael and David Barry Assistant Coach of Wrestling position, making it the first endowed assistant coach’s position within Columbia athletics. “We thank David and Michael for their tremendous generosity,” said Dianne M. Murphy, Columbia’s director of intercollegiate athletics and physical education. “Their leadership gift provides the critical resources necessary to build and sustain a championship wrestling program.” More›

A bequest from Linda Matheson ’66SW, ’74SW will provide more than $761,000 to establish the Linda Matheson Fund for the Columbia University School of Social Work Library. Ms. Matheson lived in Astoria, Queens, and was a longtime donor to the School's annual fund.

The Henry Luce Foundation has awarded $295,000 to the Burke Theological Library for the processing of the Missionary Research Library Archives and the William Adams Brown Ecumenical Archives. The Missionary archives contain over 160 unique collections from missionaries and missionary organizations from six continents in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with special strength in early 20th-century China, Japan, and Korea. The Brown archives contain over 30 archival collections initiated in 1945 at Union Theological Seminary as a source for the documentation and study of modern ecumenism.

The Henry Luce Foundation is dedicated to encouraging the development of religious leaders through theological education, and fostering scholarship that links the academy to religious communities and other audiences. More›

Stephen and Elizabeth Silverman — parents of a 2010 Columbia College graduate — have made a donation in support of the Silverman Family Internship Fund at the College. The gift, which is administered through the Center for Career Education, encourages College students to accept quality internships that foster their career exploration and build upon their academic studies, while alleviating some of the financial burden associated with unpaid internships.

The Richard Paul and Ellen S. Richman Private Family Foundation has made a $10 million gift to establish the Richard Paul Richman Center for Business, Law, and Public Policy, an interdisciplinary academic center that will be jointly administered by Columbia Business School and Columbia Law School.

Richard Richman '72LAW, '73 BUS is chairman of The Richman Group, one of the largest owners and developers of rental housing in the nation. He serves on the Dean’s Council at the Law School and is a member of the Business School’s Board of Overseers.

The new center will encourage collaboration among Columbia’s most prominent business and legal scholars to generate research that will inform public policy and help to unite scholarship with its real-world applications in both business and law. The Richman Center will also provide a platform for the promotion of dialogue and the exchange of ideas on timely and relevant issues, while inspiring future generations of students to pursue careers at the nexus of business, law, and public policy. More›

OneMarketData LLC recently donated its OneTick software to Columbia Business School for educational and research purposes. The in-kind gift, valued at $800,000, will provide the Business School’s faculty members and students with ongoing access to one of the most powerful proprietary data management tools available. The OneTick system allows for the efficient processing of voluminous market data, which will help streamline research in market microstructure, high-frequency trading, and market making.

A.J. Rice ’87BUS has pledged $150,000 to permanently endow the Albert and Violaine Rice Scholarship Fund at Columbia Business School. This new scholarship will enable the Business School to award need-based financial aid to qualified MBA students interested in pursuing careers in healthcare and/or pharmaceutical management. The Rice Scholarship is the first financial aid award at the Business School designed to help attract top students to the School’s burgeoning Healthcare and Pharmaceutical Management Program.

A bequest gift from the estate of Louis Lowenstein Jr. has provided $500,000 in support of Columbia Law School’s Lou and Helen Lowenstein Loan Repayment Assistance Fellowship. Established in 1997 through the generosity of Professor Louis Lowenstein ’47BUS, ’53LAW and Helen Lowenstein, the New York Community Trust-Lowenstein Fund supports the School’s enhanced Loan Repayment Assistance Program (LRAP). Public Service Fellowships — awarded to students who have demonstrated dedication to and exceptional promise for leadership in public interest law — are administered within the guidelines of the LRAP program at Columbia Law School, and the schedule of forgiveness is accelerated beyond that of the typical LRAP arrangement.

Karl J. Hirshman made a pledge of $100,000 to the School of Nursing to endow a scholarship fund in memory of — and named for — his late wife, Laura “Poppy” Schwartz Hirshman ’59NRS.

A $25,000 gift from the Dr. Scholl Foundation will fund current scholarships.

The Hugoton Foundation’s $60,000 gift to the School of Nursing will support the purchase of a Laerdal SimMan 3G patient simulator for the benefit of doctor of nursing practice students enrolled in an interprofessional program with students from Columbia University Medical Center. The wireless, programmable device allows students to acquire in-depth knowledge of complex cases in a virtual setting.

When Professor Kenneth Frampton celebrated his 80th birthday in November 2010, Dean Mark Wigley of GSAPP announced an effort to establish an endowed lecture series in honor of the beloved longtime faculty member. The annual lecture will recognize Professor Frampton’s more than 40 years of service to the School as well as his significant contributions to the field of architecture. Since then, 24 donors have already committed more than $330,000 to the fund. The School will continue its efforts throughout the year and will announce the total amount raised at the first Frampton Lecture in November 2011.

The Stillman-Lack Foundation — established to promote the art of Ary Stillman (1891-1967), a Russian-American artist whose independent and wayward course moved him from representational art to the postwar, painterly style of abstract art inspired by cubism and surrealism — has made a series of donations to support graduate students in the Department of Art History and Archaeology. In connection with its liquidation and dissolution, the foundation has donated 90 of Stillman’s works to the University. It has also made a gift of $800,000 to establish the Ary Stillman Fellowship Fund, which will provide fellowships for graduate students in art history, with a preference for those studying modern art.

Peter Klein ’77GSAS, ’87GSAS and Catherine Klein have made a $100,000 donation to fund student fellowships in mathematics at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Under the terms of the GSAS Fellowship Match, a program in partnership with the late John W. Kluge ’37CC, ’88HON, the gift generates an additional $100,000 in student support.

Richard Ruzika ’81CC has completed a $1 million gift — including $600,000 donated through Goldman Sachs Gives — in support of the Campbell Sports Center planned for Columbia’s Baker Athletics Complex.

Thomas Cornacchia ’85CC recently made a $1 million gift through Goldman Sachs Gives to establish an endowment for Columbia rowing that will support the men’s heavyweight, men’s lightweight, and women’s programs.