Tufts receives $10 million in donations

President Larry Bacow assured the Tufts community that the nationwide economic slowdown has impacted the University's endowment only minimally and announced that the University had recently received more than $10 million in major donations in a campus-wide e-mail sent on Wednesday.

The eight donations, collected during a ten-day period preceding the last trustees' weekend, were unexpected. "It was a surprise," Trustee Secretary Linda Dixon said. "I think they deliberately batched them all together to announce them at the meeting, but I didn't expect it and I didn't know it was coming."

Over the last few weeks, new donations and several pending donations under discussion were solidified. "We had confirmation from the donors that their intention was to invest generously in the University," Vice-President of Development Brian Lee said. While most of the donors had given to the University before, many of these recent contributions were the donors' largest to date, Lee said.

Dan and Karen Pritzker presented the University with the largest donation, a $5 million challenge grant from their family foundation, the Jay Pritzker Foundation. The grant will allow Tufts to increase financial aid for underrepresented undergraduate minority students in Arts, Sciences and Engineering. While recipients will be aware of the source of their aid, donors have allowed the University to use its own guidelines to select which students receive money.

The Pritzkers will continue to match new gifts for the same purpose for the next five years, Bacow said. Trustee Kathryn Cassell Cheault's $1.1 million donation and a $1 million contribution by an anonymous donor quickly answered the challenge. "I was pleasantly surprised," Minority Affairs Director Colleen Romain said. She hopes the increased funds will help increase diversity at Tufts.

To honor the career and continued service of senior Vice President Tom Murnane, an anonymous donor pledged $1 million. At the request of Murnane, this money will be applied to the fundraising efforts for the construction of the proposed new music building. According to Brian Lee, the donation increased the total funds collected for the project to approximately $11.5 million, leaving the fundraising effort only about a million dollars short of the funds needed to begin construction.

The GE Fund and the Lockheed-Martin Corporation also donated money to support two of the engineering school's youth outreach programs. "We're thrilled to receive these donations, especially in the days when the economy is not so great," Dean of Engineering Ioannis Miaoulis said. "It is a demonstration of how highly Tufts' engineering school is viewed by the corporate world."

The Engineering School received $400,000 in donations from the GE Fund, which will be used to support a program created by the engineering school and education department to teach algebra concepts to elementary school studies through engineering activities, according to Miaoulis.

Additionally, the Lockheed Martin Corporation, whose core business areas are systems integration, aeronautics, space, and technology services, donated $500,000 to the K-12 Distance Learning Program.

This focus fits well with Tufts' K-12 program, the goal of which is to improve students' technical competence and encourage them to pursue careers in science and engineering, Miaoulis said. "Tufts' School of Engineering is the primary force in disseminating engineering curriculum in K-12 schools," he said. The money will be used to purchase equipment and hire more teachers and people to run the distance learning facility.

With his $1.5 million challenge grant to the Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, Trustee Edward Budd made the second largest donation. Though the Nutrition School leads the nation in faculty and research capabilities, "because it is a relatively new school, it doesn't have a large number of alumni to support it," Budd said.

According to Budd, the money will provide a base for a $10 million endowment fund and a "a base for investment earnings that can be paid out year after year."

Another donor, Glen K. Lau, MD, contributed $1 million to support scholarship funds for high-achieving medical students, Bacow said.

In the e-mail, Bacow expressed gratitude to the donors for helping the University during the current economic slump. "We should all be proud that others are willing to invest in Tufts even during these difficult times," Bacow said. "Each of these gifts represents an endorsement of the terrific work done by our students, faculty, and staff. To all of you who work to make Tufts the special place that it is, I thank you."