Recent News

Bob Berne ’60CC, ’62BUS and his wife, Steffi, have made gifts totaling $13 million in support of financial aid at Columbia College. The gifts are in the form of charitable remainder unitrusts, which will be invested as part of the University’s endowment. Mr. Berne expects that the growth of the endowment investments will generate significant unitrust income for him and his family during their lifetimes. Even more, these unitrusts will ultimately provide a great deal of support for financial aid. The gifts are the first to Columbia of this type.

“Bob is a wonderful volunteer,” says Fred Hartwick, the executive director of Planned Giving. “He was instrumental in helping the Office of Gift Planning to develop this opportunity to invest funds in the University endowment.” For more information about this type of gift, please call the Gift Planning Office at 800-338-3294.

The School of Nursing, in collaboration with Columbia University's Irving Institute of Translational Science, has been named one of the first four recipients of grant funding from the newly launched Jonas Nursing Scholars Program. Established last year by the New York-based Jonas Center of Nursing Excellence, the program is designed to address the nation's worsening shortage of academic nursing faculty, primarily by underwriting local educational development of academic nurses and partnerships between NYC-area schools of nursing and clinical affiliates. SON will receive $560,000 over four years to support two predoctoral scholars, who must agree to complete their doctoral degrees by the end of the four-year grant period and teach nursing in New York metropolitan area for at least four years afterwards. The School is also a participant in a cross-collaboration with Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing and Columbia University School of Public Health to fund a third Jonas Scholar. Columbia's two Jonas Scholars will be part of the first student cohort to enter the School of Nursing's newly approved Ph.D. Program in September 2008. For additional details about the Columbia Jonas Scholars or the Ph.D. in Nursing Program, contact Program Director, Nancy King Reame, MSN, Ph.D.

An anonymous donor has pledged $20 million in support of the new Interdisciplinary Science Building, currently under construction on the northwest corner of Morningside Campus, as well as $5 million for College financial aid.

University Trustees Chair Bill Campbell ’62CC has donated $2.5 million to benefit ethnic studies and Columbia’s Center for Career Education.

The Mendelson family has donated $1.5 million in support of the new Mendelson Family Professorship in American Studies. With additional support from the Lenfest Matching Program, the resulting $3 million endowment will fund the directorship of the American Studies program. Professor Andrew Delbanco, the current program director, will be the first Mendelson Family Professor.

University Trustees Chair Bill Campbell ’62CC has donated $2.5 million as part of his ongoing support of the Columbia Campaign for Athletics: Achieving Excellence. The gift will go toward new and improved facilities at the Baker Field Athletics Complex.

A $2 million pledge by Geoffrey ’82EN and Annette Grant ’83BC will be used to endow the squash head coaching position, which will be named for Coach Ken Torrey—who started Columbia’s program in the 1970s—upon his retirement. The Grants are leading an effort to build the program’s endowment so it can move to varsity status in 2011.

Columbia Business School is proud to announce EMC Corporation’s recent in-kind donation of a full Storage Area Network (SAN) valued at $750,000. The EMC SAN will allow the School’s Information and Technology Group to completely overhaul and modernize its current storage environment. Features of the network include a new centralized research server and student portal system, which will greatly enhance School-wide research and benefit students with increased e-mail storage, quotas, document sharing, and RSS capabilities. This generous gift was made possible by Joe Tucci ’84, Chairman, President, and CEO of EMC Corporation, and member of the School’s Board of Overseers.

The Glaser Progress Foundation continues its generous support of the Access Project with a new gift of $1.5 million, bringing its total support to $5.9 million since 2003. The Access Project—directed by Dr. Josh Ruxin, assistant clinical professor of public health at the Mailman School of Public Health—provides management support and technical assistance to strengthen health systems in Africa, with a current focus in Rwanda.

With a new $1.4 million grant from the United Health Foundation, researchers and collaborators from the Earth Institute’s Urban Design Lab and the Collaborative Initiatives at M.I.T. have joined together to address the complex issues related to the epidemic of obesity in America through an interdisciplinary, systems-based approach. This one-year project will draw together experts in public health, medicine, business, economics, and design to apply a broad perspective while identifying and analyzing issues on a variety of scales. The ultimate goal is to pinpoint strategies for arresting and reversing the upward trend in childhood obesity and to provide recommendations for implementing national pilot projects.

Joseph ’64CC and Barbara Ellis pledged $1 million to support the critical priorities of the Earth Institute, including the Earth Clinic and the development of the field of sustainable development as a major at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

Betsee Parker pledged $1 million in unrestricted support for the Earth Institute’s work in the Millennium villages and for the work of Earth Institute director and Columbia professor Jeffrey Sachs.

Advancing its long-standing mission to find a cure for diabetes, the Russell Berrie Foundation and its leader, Angelica Berrie, have made an extraordinary commitment of $21 million to Columbia for the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center. The gift will provide funding for non-reimbursed clinical care, a new professorship, new pilot research, a continuation of the Berrie Program in Cellular Therapies (research efforts aimed at preventing the devastating complications of diabetes), and an endowment. This gift is part of a larger $28 million gift shared by Columbia and New York-Presbyterian Hospital for patient-centered diabetes-related efforts. The Berrie Foundation’s contributions to diabetes research and treatment at CUMC now total nearly $57 million.

The Paul Marks Scholars Fund at CUMC provides matching funds for academic departments to recruit outstanding young scientists and to retain those who have distinguished themselves as top physician-scientists. Recent commitments to the Paul Marks Scholars Fund include a $1 million commitment from Jack and Susan Rudin and a $100,000 commitment from the Felix & Elizabeth Rohatyn Foundation.

Family and friends of the late Muzzi Mirza have made gifts and pledges totaling more than $2 million in support of the Muzzi Mirza Pancreatic Cancer Prevention Program in the Pancreas Center. The campaign that established the program was led by Mr. Mirza’s wife, Susan, and his former business associates, Stephen Berger, Paul Barnett, Douglas Hitchner, William Hopkins, Brian Kwait, and Douglas Rotatori.

The Engineering School has received a gift from Philips Electronics to establish the Philips Electronics Professorship in Columbia’s Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics in The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science. The contribution from Philips is being given in honor of Professor Gertrude Neumark Rothschild’s pioneering role as a woman engineer. Dr. Neumark Rothschild is a current member of the Columbia faculty who was employed by Philips Laboratories between 1960 and 1985.

The professorship will be held by either a newly or recently tenured faculty member, and may either be someone currently on the faculty or someone recruited to the position with consideration given to a candidate’s status as a member of a group that is underrepresented on the faculty of the School of Engineering and Applied Science, so long as such consideration is in keeping with Columbia’s goal of obtaining the benefits of diversity.

Donald C. Waite ’66BUS has pledged $1.5 million to support a new chair in social enterprise, the seventh created so far under the $25 million Samberg Challenge.

A newly endowed chair in the Arts and Sciences will be created with the generous support of Columbia University’s Black Alumni Council. The M. Moran Weston/Black Alumni Council Professorship at Columbia University, which is expected to be formally approved by the University’s Trustees in the spring, will be held by a professor in an Arts and Sciences department whose scholarship and teaching focuses on an aspect of the African-American experience. Named in recognition of Columbia’s first African-American Trustee, the position will be endowed at the level of $3 million through a partnership between the University and its alumni and friends.

The Goldthwaite Foundation has pledged $1 million to the College of Physicians & Surgeons to support research in colorectal cancer through the Laparoscopic Oncology and Physiology Laboratory in the Department of Surgery.

The St. Giles Foundation has pledged a $1 million gift to the College of Physicians & Surgeons to found the St. Giles Comprehensive Sickle Cell-Thalassemia Program at Columbia University, with the goal of establishing a national model for the care of patients with sickle-cell disease, thalassemia, and other hemoglobinopathies. The program will be directed by Gary Brittenham, M.D., James A. Wolff Professor of Pediatrics and director of pediatric hematology, and Robert DeBellis, M.D., associate clinical professor of medicine-hematology/oncology.

Hal Robertson ’81EN has pledged $1 million in support of Columbia’s baseball program. The gift counts toward the $100 million Columbia Campaign for Athletics.

Ambassador Steven Green and his daughter Kimberly have given $500,000 through the Green Family Foundation to support the Earth Institute’s efforts to provide policy advice on efforts to alleviate extreme poverty in Haiti.

A $2 million gift has established the new Lulu Chow Wang Visiting Scholar Program, which will build a bridge between the Business School and management institutions across Asia. Each year the School will welcome an academic or individual from the business, nonprofit, or government sectors. Scholars will be chosen from China or, if necessary, elsewhere in Asia. While in residence, the visiting scholar will participate in the School’s intellectual life and take full advantage of the University’s resources in order to pursue his or her own research projects.

James L. Melcher ’61CC and Dr. April Ann Benasich have donated $500,000 to benefit both Columbia College and the Columbia fencing program. Fencing will receive $200,000 in endowment funds plus an additional $50,000 for current use, which will allow the team to participate in more national tournaments. In allocating $200,000 for financial aid endowment at Columbia College and $50,000 to the College annual fund, the couple enhances their gift through the Kluge Challenge, which will provide an additional $250,000 in their name toward endowed financial aid.

Myra Levine Harris has pledged $150,000 to create an annual prize in memory of her son, Arthur J. Harris ’01CC. The gift will allow a leading student in creative writing or film (at the School of the Arts) or in journalism (at the Graduate School of Journalism) to complete an ambitious project upon graduation, with the prize alternating between the schools each year.

Barbara Whitman ’95SOA, a producer of the Broadway musicals Legally Blonde and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, has donated $100,000 to create an endowed fellowship for SOA students—the first such endowment from a graduate of the producing program in the school’s Theatre Arts division.

The Lincoln Fund awarded the School of Nursing $50,000 for support of minority student scholarships. This is the seventh consecutive year that the Lincoln Fund has provided scholarship support.

Procter and Gamble recently donated $150,000 to support student programs at the College of Dental Medicine. The gift will support the newly established Faculty Advisor Program that provides informal mentoring and career guidance to enhance the student environment. The P&G gift will also sponsor the White Coat Ceremony for our incoming Class of 2011 and will underwrite the Transition Ceremony that marks the transition from second year to third year, when students begin to care for patients.

John W. Rowe, M.D., professor of health policy and management at the Mailman School of Public Health, received a $250,000 grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to lead an international group of social and behavioral scholars, demographers, and economists in planning the National Research Network on an Aging Society.

The National Center for Children in Poverty (Mailman School of Public Health) received a $250,000 grant from an anonymous donor to support the Center's work on healthy child development and school readiness.

The Mellon Foundation has donated $6 million to create an endowment that will fund summer and travel fellowships as well as scholar research grants for doctoral students in Arts and Sciences departments.

Columbia has established an endowment for the head coaching position for varsity men’s tennis, which will be named the Bidyut K. Goswami Head Coach of Men’s Tennis whenever Goswami retires. (The University does not permit endowed titles to include the name of the person holding the position.) Goswami has led the Lions to six Ivy League titles in his 27 years at the University. The endowment, part of the $100 million Columbia Campaign for Athletics, is supported by $2 million in gifts from Philip Milstein ’71CC, vice chair of the University Trustees and a former Columbia tennis player, and several other College alumni, former tennis players, and friends. Until Goswami retires, the endowment’s title will be the Columbia Tennis Alumni and Friends Head Coach of Men’s Tennis.