Recent News

Daniel M. Cain '72BUS has donated $1 million in support of the new Cain Brothers & Co. Professorship at the Graduate School of Business. Endowment for the professorship is also supported by $1.5 million from the Samberg Challenge Fund, with a collection of other donors providing the remaining $500,000. The professorship will focus on health care.

Leonard A. Sylk '65BUS has donated $500,000 to the Graduate School of Business for a purpose to be determined.

The Merck Company Foundation has made a new $869,000 grant to support the Earth Institute’s Global Health program--and specifically the expansion of the Community Health Worker initiative across all 14 Millennium Villages sites in Africa. This grant represents a tremendous boost to the Institute's public health objectives in Africa.

The Earth Institute has received two significant gifts to support its efforts for the China 2049 sustainability applied research and strategic planning initiative in collaboration with the National Development and Reform Commission of China. General Electric has contributed $100,000 and the Brookings Institution has given $75,000. The project will study China's long-term prospects for addressing challenges primarily facing the country in: macroeconomics policy, energy, environment, water, and urbanization.

A bequest from Annette Edwards has generated a gift of $2.4 million for financial aid at Columbia College. The bequest benefits the Carl M. Brukenfeld Class of 1927 Memorial Scholarship Fund; Ms. Edwards was the lifelong companion of Ronald M. Brukenfeld ’39GSAS, Carl Brukenfeld’s brother.

BNP Paribas has made a donation of $1.95 million to Columbia Business School. While $35,000 of the gift will be used to support programs for first-year MBA students, and another $15,000 to support the School’s 33rd Annual Dinner, the remaining $1.9 million will endow a program still to be determined.

University Trustee and Business School Board of Overseers member Ann Kaplan ’72SW, ’77BUS has donated $1.575 million to the Business School. The gift designates $1.5 million for the endowment of a professorship in a field to be determined. The remaining $75,000 will provide scholarship funds for business students.

GSAPP received a $500,000 gift from Mrs. Dorothy Adibi to establish an endowment in honor of her late husband who graduated from GSAPP in 1951. The Ali Adibi Distinguished Scholarship Fund will provide much-needed scholarships for international students in the school’s Urban Planning Program, with a preference for students from the Middle East.

Alexander Georgiadis ’85SIPA has endowed the Georgiadis-Moscahlaidis fellowship, which will support deserving students at SIPA, through a generous pledge of $150,000 via his company, Krinos Foods Canada. Georgiadis, who lives in Athens, Greece, with his wife, Evee, and four children, is one of the newest members of the SIPA Advisory Board.

When Alexander was a student at SIPA, he was the president of the student council (currently known as SIPASA). "Alexander demonstrated his commitment to the School while he was a student, when he served on the 60th-anniversary committee, and now again with this generous gift," said Dean John H. Coatsworth of SIPA. “The School and especially its students are fortunate to have loyal alumni like Alexander.”

Joan Tompkins Wheeler '46NRS has made generous gifts totaling $100,000 to both endow the Joan Tompkins Wheeler '46 Scholarship Fund and to provide leadership support to the School's critically important Annual Fund.

The School of Nursing is pleased to announce the successful completion of a generous challenge match of $100,000, initiated by an anonymous donor last fall, to help energize Nursing's Annual Fund. It helped to stimulate gifts from new donors and increase giving from past donors, all the time providing crucial support for Nursing’s scholarship program which receives 100% of all Annual Fund contributions.

The Walter H.D. Killough Trust made a gift of $50,000 to endow the Killough Foundation Scholarship for Nurse Practitioner Students in Gerontology.

The Sidney E. Frank Foundation has committed $900,000 to the Celiac Disease Center at Columbia University Medical Center to fund a gastroenterologist, post-doctoral immunologist, and a nutritionist.

Kenneth A. Bodenstein ’57SEAS, ’58SEAS and ’60BUS has made a gift of $100,000 to establish the Bodenstein Family Endowment Fund to support the Columbia women’s tennis program.

A recently completed $3 million fundraising effort has led to the establishment of the first endowed chair in the Polish Studies program at Columbia’s East Central European Center. Support for the chair came from numerous donors including the Brooklyn-based Polish Slavic Federal Credit Union, which donated $681,000 all told. Other major donors include the Warsaw Stock Exchange, the National Depository for Securities, ENEA, an energy conglomerate, Poland Energy Group, the Special Economic Zones of Katowice, Warmia and Mazury, Pomorska and Kostrzyn-Strubicka, the Malopolska Agency for Regional Development, the Bogdan Fiszer Silesia Capital Fund, and the Polish Army Veterans Association. The position will be filled by a scholar specializing in one of the social sciences as it pertains to Poland and its neighbors. More›

Frank Gallipolli ’86CC has donated $1.5 million in support of new faculty endowment in the Arts and Sciences. The Lenfest Challenge matching program has funded the remainder of the $3 million endowment for the Frank Gallipolli Professorship of Modern and Contemporary Art.

The Copyright Advisory Office—part of Columbia University Libraries/Information Services—received a grant from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation to undertake a study analyzing license agreements from a sample of museums. The purpose is to compare copyright law as it applies to providing photographic reproductions or other images of art objects in museum collections for use in research, teaching, and publication.

The North American Coordinating Council on Japanese Library Resources will contribute 75 percent of the purchase price of special acquisitions of Japanese resources for the C. V. Starr East Asian Library.

In 2006, University Trustee Gerry Lenfest ’58 LAW pledged to match, one-to-one, 25 gifts of $1.5 million for new faculty endowment in the Arts and Sciences. This challenge inspired 23 donors to contribute a total of $37.5 million. The resulting $75 million will provide $3 million of endowed support for each of the 25 new faculty positions in perpetuity. More›

At a February 26 dinner at the President’s House, President Bollinger announced the creation of the General Studies Scholars Match, a program to match new endowment gifts in support of financial aid at the School of General Studies. The fund is supported by two generous pledges, including $1.5 million from Larry Lawrence ’69GS, ’71BUS and $1.5 million from a pair of anonymous donors. Successful completion of the match will add $6 million to the total endowment for financial aid at General Studies, an increase of more than 30 percent.

The Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation has established its first endowed professorship in real estate development thanks to the generous support of real estate executive and alumnus Marc Holliday, and his wife, Sheree Holliday. The Marc Holliday Professorship of Real Estate Development will be held by the new full-time director of the school’s masters program in real estate development, representing the first full-time faculty position in the program. The Hollidays donated $5.5 million to create the endowment supporting the chair, and a search to fill the position is currently under way. Creating the Holliday Professorship is the cornerstone of a larger strategy to upgrade the school’s real estate development program and is one of the school’s highest priorities. This critical step will help the program move to a three-semester curriculum beginning in June.

The Business School has received an anonymous current use gift of $1 million to support a wide range of initiatives to strengthen its brand and presence in Asia. These activities may include events and conferences, student study trips, partnerships with Asian institutions, faculty research, and new curriculum development.

Ray Horton, the Frank R. Lautenberg Professor of Ethics and Corporate Governance and a Columbia Business School faculty member since 1970, is the single individual most responsible for the development of the School’s renowned Social Enterprise Program, of which he is the founder and outgoing academic director. A consortium of 115 (and counting) donors—including faculty members, administrators, and former students—have established the Ray Horton Social Enterprise Fund in honor of his legacy at the School. This gift, which is expected eventually to exceed $300,000, will be formally announced before an audience of 500 guests at an event in Low Library on February 18, 2009.

Gifts in kind from friends and donors are crucial to strengthening the outstanding collections of Columbia Libraries. Some noteworthy recent gifts include:

Julius Zsako ’75GSAS bequeathed the Gabe M. Wiener Music and Arts Library, a collection of 54 volumes of first and early engraved editions of the works of Ignaz Josef Pleyel (1757–1831), a German composer and music publisher. Nineteen items in the collection are the first known copies of Pleyel’s works in U.S. libraries.

The Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library has received from Ms. Carol de Harak five original drawings by architect John Hejduk (1929–2000).The drawings are from Hejduk’s Diamond Thesis, and show rotated views of plan elements in the drawings as published in Three Projects (1969).

The C. V. Starr East Asian Library received a three-year grant of $300,000 from The Starr Foundation to support initiatives throughout the Library—from infrastructure improvements, to staffing expansion, to collection development. The Library may use the unrestricted funds for ongoing institutional activities, such as enhancing education services and strengthening collection care.

The Earth Institute’s Tropical Agriculture Program and the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) have received $2.15 million and $1.43 million, respectively, as part of a $15 million Gates Foundation grant of support for the new Globally Integrated African Soil Information Service project. Pedro Sanchez, head of the Tropical Agriculture Program, will lead the initiative in partnership with Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical (CIAT), the prime recipient of the Gates grant and one of the Earth Institute’s longstanding partners in promoting sustainable agriculture in Africa. The new project’s objective is to provide accurate, up-to-date information about soil resources and their management in order to support sound decision and policymaking around sustainable agricultural development in Africa.

The Earth Institute’s Tropical Agriculture Program also received a $248,875 grant from the Packard Foundation in support of the International Nitrogen Initiative (INI). The program’s senior research scientist, Dr. Cheryl Palm, was named chair of the INI this year and these funds will support her INI coordination and strategic planning work to improve soil fertility. The grant will also support a postdoc researcher based in Kenya leading an assessment nitrogen deficits and recovery in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.

The Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation has pledged $1.5 million to the Earth Institute. Two-thirds of the gift, or $1 million, will support drylands sustainability and biodiversity work in Mali, including a full-time postdoctoral researcher. The remaining $500,000 will be used to assist Mali in planning for scaling-up the Millennium Villages strategy to achieve the Millennium Development Goals in the poorest areas across the country.

The Harold Grinspoon Foundation pledged $300,000 in support of the Director’s Discretionary Fund at the Earth Institute. Harold Grinspoon and his wife, Diane Troderman visited Senegal and Mali with the Office of Funding Initiatives in summer 2008 as part of a Millennium Villages Project retreat.

The Institute also received $75,000 from Bonnie Potter—who made the gift in memory of her father, Lester Potter—to provide educational assistance in West Africa as well as unrestricted general support. Ms. Potter also participated in the retreat in Senegal and Mali, and says the trip motivated her to make a donation.

A $100,000 gift will be used to establish the Craig Scholars in Environmental Biology as part of an Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology (E3B) Scholarship Fund for Undergraduate Research. The gift comes from John and Judy Craig, parents of a student who graduated from one of E3B’s programs in 2007, and will support undergraduate summer research for students in E3B.

Dorothy Ward, the grandparent of a SEAS sophomore, has donated $100,000 for general support of SEAS. The gift has been applied to the Parents Fund.

Arthur and Dorothy Ullian P: ’08SEAS, who serve the new SEAS Parent Council as the Parents of Alumni Chairs, have pledged $50,000 for current-use financial aid.

The Dart Foundation has pledged $7 million to the Graduate School of Journalism. The gift supports the Dart Center for Trauma and Journalism, which is dedicated to improving media coverage of violence, conflict and tragedy. The Center also addresses the consequences of such coverage for those working in journalism.

Mr. Simon K.C. Li has pledged $2 million to support the Simon and June Li New Media Fund at the Graduate School of Journalism.

The School of the Arts, School of General Studies, and Columbia College have each received almost $667,000 in support of student fellowships, thanks to a $2 million pledge from an anonymous donor.

A bequest from the estates of Richard Tunstead ’33CC and Mabel Tunstead has generated $5 million to date to benefit the Arts and Sciences and Columbia College. Two-thirds of the bequest will support endowment for a pair of professorships in the Arts and Sciences, while the remaining $1.67 million will honor the Class of 1933 by supporting College scholarships. The estate’s executor notes that there may be additional support for Columbia pending future distributions from the estate.

To mark the lasting impact of Austin Quigley, who will step down as dean of Columbia College this July, the University announced the establishment of the $50 million Austin E. Quigley Endowment for Student Success, which will focus on enhanced advising and career counseling for students in Columbia College and The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science. More than half of the endowment has already been raised, with support from donors including Trustees Chair Bill Campbell ’62CC, ’64TC, Armen Avanessians ’83SEAS, Bob Berne ’60CC, ’62BUS, Mark Kingdon ’71CC, Philip Milstein ’71CC, and Richard Witten ’75CC.

A $3 million donation from Jorge Paolo Lemann will support a newly created endowment at the School of International and Public Affairs. The Jorge Paolo Lemann Fund will be used to provide fellowships or grants to any students enrolled in a dual-degree program with SIPA and Fundacao Getulio Vargas or other Brazilian institutions.

A $1.8 million bequest from Edith L. Fisch has established the Edith L. Fisch Library Collection Endowment Fund, which will support “the purchase of law books, legal publications and other research material in the English language” for the law library. Dr. Fisch was the first person to earn all degrees awarded by the Law School, earning her LL.B. in 1948, her LLM in 1949, and her J.Sc.D. in 1950. The first woman professor of law in New York state (she taught at New York Law School from 1963 to 1965), Dr. Fisch also worked in private practice, wrote the book Fisch on New York Evidence, and was a past president of the New York Womens’ Bar Association. Her nephew and fellow graduate, William Thomashower ’73, served as the executor of her estate.

A friend of the School of Nursing has made a new commitment of $300,000 to the Mary Dickey Lindsay Scholarship Endowment Fund for the Doctor of Nursing Practice.

An anonymous donor has given $100,000 to the Campaign Building Fund.

Brenda Barrowclough Brodie ’65NRS has made a gift of $50,000 in support of her endowed scholarship fund and the School’s Annual Fund.

The Hugoton Foundation has awarded $40,000 to the School of Nursing for the purchase of equipment for its simulation laboratory.

The Charles A. Frueauff Foundation has awarded $25,000 to the School of Nursing for scholarship support.

The Klingenstein Martell Foundation has made a generous pledge of $1 million to the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology to support renovation to construct the Center for Prenatal Pediatrics.

William Acquavella has made a gift of $200,000 to support the Comprehensive Vision Care Center and/or new research initiatives in the Department of Ophthalmology.

Louis V. Gerstner Jr. has made a gift of $200,000 to support the Comprehensive Vision Care Center and/or new research initiatives in the Department of Ophthalmology.

Miranda Wong Tang has made a gift of $200,000 to support the Comprehensive Vision Care Center and/or new research initiatives in the Department of Ophthalmology.

Richard E. Deems made a gift of $100,000 to fund research efforts in the Department of Ophthalmology.

Thomas L. Kempner Jr. made a gift of $150,000 to the Department of Medicine for osteoporosis and metabolic bone disease research and prevention.

Mr. Ariel and Mrs. Tal Recanati made a gift of $103,000 to the Department of Medicine to advance celiac disease research.

David L. Luke III has made a gift of $100,000 to the Department of Medicine to support clinical research for asthma.

The Bank of America Charitable Foundation made a gift of $250,000 to the CUMC campaign.

The Starr Foundation has made a gift in the amount of $200,000 to the Department of Ophthalmology to be allocated to the Starr Scholars Fund.

The Klingenstein Martell Foundation has made a generous pledge of $1 million to the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology to support renovation to construct the Center for Prenatal Pediatrics.

Robert Berne ’60CC, ’62BUS has donated $5 million to support the Quigley Tribute Endowment. The fund honors Austin Quigley, who will step down as dean of Columbia College this July, and will be used to support and enhance academic and career advising and student services at the College and SEAS.