Education

Ohio University will use a $105 million donation, the largest private gift in the school's history, to build a medical college in Columbus to help fill a growing shortage of family physicians.

The donation from the Osteopathic Heritage Foundations, which is also the largest gift ever given to an Ohio university, will pay about a third of the projected $300 million cost to transform OU's medical school over the next 15 years.

Virginia Tech has received three donations totaling $45 million, including the largest gift in the university's history and a $17 million bequest from a Richmond alumnus. The gifts, announced Thursday by Tech President Charles W. Steger, all will benefit the College of Engineering. The largest gift is a $25 million commitment from an anonymous donor to be used for the Signature Engineering Building project.

Five California institutions are among the top 120 community colleges in the United States, according to a new ranking from the nonprofit Aspen Institute.

The colleges on the list – selected from 1,200 institutions nationwide – are now eligible to compete for the first-ever Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence. The top college and two or three runners-up will be selected in December and will split a $1 million award.

Included are Coastline Community College, Santa Barbara City College, Allan Hancock College, San Joaquin Delta College and Mt. San Antonio College.

On Monday afternoon, the W. P. Carey Foundation plans to announce that it will give $30 million to the University of Maryland School of Law, which is in Baltimore. It will be renamed the Francis King Carey School of Law, after Mr. Carey’s grandfather, an 1880 graduate.

High Point University is getting $10 million each from four local families, doubling the number of families who have made gifts at that level since Nido R. Qubein became the school's president in 2005. Most of the gifts from the families of Cobein and Earl E. Congdon, Fred E. Wilson Jr. and Mark A. Norcross are dedicated to the university's School of Health Sciences and proposed school of pharmacy.

French universities, long entirely dependent on the state for their finances, have set up 39 private foundations to receive donations, the country’s higher education minister, Valérie Pécresse, announced Wednesday.

The initiative, made possible by a change to French law in 2007 giving universities more autonomy, is intended to allow donations from alumni and private individuals as well as from businesses. Nearly half the 83 universities have already set up foundations or partnerships, and an additional 60 are expected to be announced in the coming months.

Six months after announcing a headline-grabbing $100 million donation to Newark’s schools, the first installment of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s grant will finally reach city classrooms.

The nearly $1 million award, granted to five new public alternative high schools, was announced Tuesday following a week of open hostility after the city’s school advisory board opposed the schools set to receive grants. In an uncommon rebuke to the board, state officials, who have controlled the district since 1995, reversed the board’s decision.

The United Way for Southeastern Michigan plans to transform seven more metro Detroit high schools into a series of new and smaller schools using a charitable gift of $27.1 million from the General Motors Foundation.

The money also will pay for seven early learning community centers near the high schools where parents can learn to prepare their children for kindergarten.

The foundation announced the five-year gift, its largest ever, in December and will announce the seven high schools: East Detroit, Central, Henry Ford, Madison, Hamtramck, River Rouge and Harper Woods.

Indiana University is receiving two generous gifts from the estate of philanthropist Ruth Lilly — an estimated $10.7 million — including approximately $8 million for the Center on Philanthropy and approximately $2.7 million for the Herron School of Art and Design.

A $20 million donation from a local investment firm gave new momentum to plans for a brand-new, 119,000-square-foot student activities center at the University of Miami.

UM President Donna Shalala said the gift from the Fairholme Foundation — the charitable arm of Miami-based Fairholme Capital Management — marks the largest student-affairs donation UM has ever received.