| 1. | U. of Maryland at College Park | A. James and Alice B. Clark Charitable Foundation (Alice B. Clark) | Ms. Clark’s late husband, who died in 2015, was chairman of Clark Enterprises, a holding company, and Clark Construction Group. | $219.5 million | support for need-based scholarships, graduate fellowships, professorships, a new engineering building, and programs in the A. James Clark School of Engineering |
| 2. | U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | Larry and Beth Gies | Mr. Gies is president, founder, and chief executive of Madison Industries, a holding company in Chicago. The couple met at the university; he graduated in 1988 and she in 1989. | $150 million | support for programming and scholarships in the business school, which the university renamed the Gies College of Business |
| 3. | U. of Chicago | Kenneth C. Griffin Charitable Fund (Kenneth Griffin) | Mr. Griffin is founder and chief executive of the hedge fund Citadel, in Chicago. | $125 million | support for financial aid, research, and the recruitment of more professors in the economics department, which will be renamed the Kenneth C. Griffin Department of Economics |
| 4. | U. of Hawaii-Manoa | Jay H. Shidler | founder and managing partner of the Shidler Group, a commercial real-estate company based in Honolulu, and a 1968 university alumnus | $117 million (cash and land) | support for improvement and expansion of the Shidler College of Business, with the returns on the donated property in several major U.S. cities potentially making the college tuition-free within 40 years |
| 5. | U. of Notre Dame | Kenneth and Pamela Ricci | Mr. Ricci, who graduated from the university in 1978, is a principal of Directional Aviation Capital, a Cleveland holding company that manages private aviation corporations. | $100 million (pledge) | unrestricted use |
| 6. | U. of Chicago | Richard and Amy Wallman | Mr. Wallman is a former chief financial officer and senior vice president at Honeywell International. Ms. Wallman retired as an audit partner at Ernst & Young in 2001. The couple earned M.B.A.s at Chicago in the 1970s. | $75 million | scholarships for M.B.A. students and other support for the university’s Booth School of Business |
| 7. | U. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | John L. Townsend III and his wife, Marree Townsend | Mr. Townsend is a retired senior adviser at the New York investment company Tiger Management Corporation. Ms. Townsend owns Marree Townsend Interiors, in Connecticut. | $50 million (pledge) | $25 million in artworks to the university’s Ackland Art Museum; $10 million for the College of Arts & Sciences and its Institute for the Arts and Humanities; $10 million for the Kenan-Flagler Business School; $1 million for athletics; and the remainder for other programs |
| 7. | U. of Oregon | Anonymous | n/a | $50 million | strategic investments in the university, as chosen by President Michael Schill, that have so far included new endowed faculty positions and a media center for science and technology; a Presidential Fund for Excellence will disperse the money, which is being given over five years |
| 9. | U. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | Steve and Debbie Vetter | Mr. Vetter is chief executive of Ennis-Flint, which makes bike-lane pavement markers and other traffic-safety materials, and an operating partner at the investment firm CenterOak Partners. He and his wife, who are both 1978 university alumni, are founders and owners of Tarheel Properties. | $40 million (pledge) | $20 million to match gifts made to a scholarship fund for students from military families; $10 million for the Kenan-Flagler Business School; and $10 million for athletics. |
| 10. | Milwaukee School of Engineering | Dwight and Dian Diercks | Mr. Diercks, a 1999 alumnus and a member of the university’s Board of Regents, is senior vice president of software engineering at the California technology company Nvidia. | $34 million | support for construction of a new center, to be named the Dwight and Dian Diercks Computational Science Hall, that will house a supercomputer and classrooms and laboratories for teaching artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, robotics, and other technologies |
| 11. | St. Norbert College | Patricia A. Schneider and family, in honor of her late husband, Donald J. Schneider | Mr. Schneider, who died in 2012, was chairman emeritus of the trucking company Schneider National. A 1957 alumnus of the college, he taught finance and business administration there and was a member of its Board of Trustees. | $30 million | support for the university’s endowment |
| 12. | Boston College | Philip Schiller and his wife, Kim Gassett-Schiller | Mr. Schiller, a 1982 college alumnus, is senior vice president of worldwide marketing at Apple | $25 million | support that resulted in the naming of the Schiller Institute for Integrated Science and Society, which will be housed in a new science building |
| 12. | U. of California at San Francisco, School of Nursing | David Mortara | Mr. Mortara founded Mortara Instrument, a manufacturer of noninvasive cardiology products and electrocardiogram technology in Milwaukee. | $25 million | creation of a Center for Physiologic Research, to improve ECG monitoring systems and combat “alarm fatigue,” which occurs when clinicians become desensitized to alarms on devices |
| 12. | U. of Texas at Austin, Cockrell School of Engineering | Hildebrand Foundation (Jeffery D. and Mindy Hildebrand) | Mr. Hildebrand, a university alumnus and vice chairman of the University of Texas system’s Board of Regents, is founder and chief executive of Hilcorp Energy Company, an oil and natural-gas company in Houston. Ms. Hildebrand is a university alumna. | $25 million | support for the university’s department of petroleum and geosystems engineering, which was renamed for the couple |
| 12. | U. of Wisconsin at Madison | Ted and Mary Kellner | Mr. Kellner, a 1969 university alumnus, is a cofounder and former chief executive of Fiduciary Management, an investment firm in Milwaukee, and a cofounder and executive chairman of Fiduciary Real Estate Development. Ms. Kellner is a 1968 alumna and a former teacher and guidance counselor. They are co-chairs of the university’s capital campaign. | $25 million (pledge) | support for athletics, scholarships, faculty, and programs in education, business, and other areas |
