Volume 28 · Number 2 · Winter 2011
Campaign: Improving the world through philanthropy
Through The Campaign for UC Davis, many generous donors — alumni and other individuals, as well as foundations, corporations and other friends — are supporting the university’s land-grant mission to serve society. Here are examples of recent gifts received during the campaign’s quiet phase. These gifts represent the broad support UC Davis inspires from thousands of donors who are committed to the campaign’s priorities to advance excellence, innovation, public service, opportunity and quality of life.
UC Davis is advancing EXCELLENCE by enabling the university’s faculty, students, staff and alumni to achieve at the highest levels.
Several grants from the William and Inez Mabie Family Foundation, totaling more than $5 million, are furthering traditions of excellence established in the School of Veterinary Medicine and School of Law.
A recent $3 million commitment by the foundation to the Center for Equine Health will enable the research and education center to sustain and strengthen its nationally recognized leadership role in improving the standard of veterinary care for horses. The grant established one endowment to help support the center’s operations and included a challenge grant with the goal of establishing another endowment for the center’s directorship.
“The Mabie Endowment will allow the center and our equine faculty to continue working to improve the health, performance and welfare of horses in perpetuity,” said Gregory Ferraro ’69, D.V.M. ’71, the center’s director. “The guaranteed annual program support, combined with the fulfillment of the proposed directorship endowment, will permanently position UC Davis as an international leader in equine medical research and education.”
The foundation is also playing a vital role in the School of Law’s nearly $30 million renovation and expansion of King Hall. The foundation’s campaign gifts to the law school total more than $2 million and include a $400,000 challenge grant for the expansion and renovation project — which spurred donations from 100 percent of the law school’s faculty and more than 80 percent of its students, as well as $500,000 from other individual donors. Support for the building project is focused on the law library, which is named in the foundation’s honor. Additional gifts have created the William and Inez Mabie Foundation Scholarship.
The new east wing of King Hall officially opened Sept. 3 with a ribbon-cutting ceremony. The renovation of the original building is scheduled to begin in early 2011. For the Mabie Law Library, the upgrades include adding two new reading rooms and a dozen new group study rooms, as well as expanding the library lobby.
Thanking donors such as the Mabie Foundation at the opening of the new wing, Dean Kevin Johnson said, “Through your efforts, and with the help of countless supporters over the course of more than a decade, the School of Law now has a state-of-the-art facility befitting its status as one of the world’s great law schools.”
UC Davis is advancing INNOVATION through investments in groundbreaking research, scholarship and creative endeavors.
To foster innovation and entrepreneurship among students and faculty in the College of Engineering, software executive Tim Bucher ’86 and his family gave $1 million to endow the Tim Bucher Family Chair of Computer Science.
Professor Prasant Mohapatra, chair of the Department of Computer Science and an expert in wireless networks, sensor networks and Internet protocols, currently holds the position.
“This endowment has helped me encourage and facilitate entrepreneurial activities and industrial collaborations among faculty as well as students,” said Mohapatra. He credits the Bucher endowed chair with inspiring him and other College of Engineering researchers to create their own start-up information technology companies.
“I feel truly honored and privileged to be the first person to hold the Bucher Chair,” he said. “Tim has been an excellent mentor and is always willing to help me and the department in a multitude of ways.”
After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, Bucher became a serial entrepreneur, creating several successful companies that either went public or were acquired by tech giants like Microsoft, Apple and Dell. Bucher also served as a technology executive, working under Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Michael Dell. Many iconic consumer tech products such as Xbox, WebTV, various Macintosh computers and the iPod have Bucher’s fingerprints on them. Currently, Bucher is the owner of Trattore Wines, the Dry Creek Olive Co. and TastingRoom.com, and serves as a trustee of the UC Davis Foundation.
“I believe in making the impossible possible,” Bucher said. “I hope that the endowed chair we established in computer science can inspire the leader of that department to keep that spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship alive and well among the faculty and students for generations to come.”
UC Davis is advancing PUBLIC SERVICE by working to address the varied and pressing needs of communities near and far.
UC Davis is working to end childhood malnutrition with the help of a five-year grant of nearly $16 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The research project — one of the most comprehensive international nutrition research efforts ever conducted — is led by nutrition professor Kathryn Dewey. Dewey is the principal investigator on an interdisciplinary team of researchers that has developed new peanut butter-like nutritional supplements that are rich in vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids. Dewey’s team is studying the impact of these supplements on the growth, health and development of malnourished children in Africa.
“Global malnutrition is an immense, complex problem that requires global partnerships to tackle it,” Dewey said. “I am honored and humbled to be leading this extraordinary team of international researchers.”
Dewey is joined on the project by other UC Davis faculty members and public and private institutions from Burkina Faso, Finland, France, Ghana, Malawi and the United States.
The team is working to identify the most nutritious and cost-effective formulas of the supplements for children under age 2 and for pregnant and lactating women — as well as the best methods for distributing them.
“With just a small catsup-sized packet,” said Dewey, referring to the nutritional supplement, “we could potentially make a real difference to millions of children.”
To learn more about the project, read our winter 2010 cover story, “Tiny Packets of Hope."
UC Davis is advancing OPPORTUNITY by investing in high-caliber, diverse experiences for learning and discovery.
Johanna Barron, an installation and mixed-media artist, came to UC Davis for graduate work in art because of the department’s reputation for freedom to experiment across media. Her opportunities for creative exploration expanded because of a Gadberry Student Support Award, made possible by a 2007 gift of $1 million from the estate of Freemond E. “Pete” Gadberry ’67.
In the late 1960s Gadberry studied under, and was inspired by, an illustrious faculty that included internationally renowned artists Robert Arneson, Wayne Thiebaud and Roy DeForest, some of the artists who first brought the department to national prominence.
Jessie Ann Owens, dean of the Division of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies, foresees Gadberry’s gift fostering the program’s longtime culture of excellence for years to come. “It is a tribute to the strong tradition of studio art on this campus, which has been a hallmark in our division for decades,” Owens said. To date, the gift has helped support 21 students.
Barron, who graduated with her M.F.A. last spring, is participating in a yearlong fellowship at the prestigious Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, where she is working on sculpture, painting and short stories.
“UC Davis has a truly great and special art program,” Barron said. She offers heartfelt gratitude for Gadberry’s support. “I understand why he believed in the program.”
UC Davis is advancing QUALITY OF LIFE by investing in teaching, research, patient care and public service on the range of issues that improve well-being.
Due to the generosity of visionary philanthropists, clinicians at UC Davis’ new Surgery and Emergency Services Pavilion — northern California’s only Level I adult and pediatric trauma center — are improving the quality of life for residents across the region and providing them an unprecedented level of care.
Among the pavilion’s leading donors are Professor Emeritus Michael W. Chapman ’58 — who is considered one of the founding fathers of modern trauma surgery and who is the former chair of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery — and his wife, Elizabeth, who jointly donated $1 million to the pavilion. As lead donors and volunteers, the couple has given or secured more than $9 million in contributions to both UC Davis and the Health System. To honor the Chapmans’ contributions, the pavilion’s emergency department and trauma center have been named the Michael W. Chapman Emergency and Trauma Center; nearby is the Elizabeth C. Chapman Emergency Department Waiting Room.
The new facility “dramatically increases the capacity to deliver care to more patients with even better quality and outcomes,” said Chapman, who chaired the fundraising effort for the pavilion. The facility features patient- and family-friendly design, a state-of-the-art fully automated laboratory and a burn unit, as well as world-class surgical and cardiac catheterization suites. There is also a separate pediatric emergency area, with recovery rooms that have enough space for families.
In every aspect of the facility’s design and equipment, “patients are the top priority,” Chapman explained.
Other leading donors to the pavilion include the Firefighters Burn Institute, whose contributions financed the burn center; the Lions Education Foundation District 4-C5 and Lions Clubs International Foundation, in support of pediatric care; the Robert S. and Star Pepper Foundation; The Koret Foundation; and Denny and Jeanene Dickenson.
“The members of our Health System family, including faculty, staff and donors, whose contributions have resulted in the new Surgery and Emergency Services Pavilion, have made a difference in countless lives, for generations to come,” said Claire Pomeroy, chief executive officer of the UC Davis Health System, UC Davis vice chancellor for human health sciences and dean of the School of Medicine.
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