Here is this week’s news of grants and gifts that may be of particular interest to women in higher education.
The University of Iowa received a gift from alumna Sheryl Stoll to establish the Iowa High School Girls Basketball Pioneer Fund, which will recognize the state of Iowa’s girls’ high school basketball history and support some of the pressing needs of the university’s women’s basketball team. Stoll received her juris doctorate from the University of Iowa in 1980. She was inspired to create the new fund by her late grandmother, who played on a successful high school basketball team in the 1930s. Although the team was eligible to play in their state’s championship tournament, their school’s superintendent barred them from participating, saying the tournament “would be too hard on the girls.”
The men’s and women’s basketball teams at Columbia University received a $10 million gift from the family of Jeannie and Jonathan Lavine. The funds will provide support to both teams and endow the women’s head coaching position, now known as the Lavine Family Head Coach of Women’s Basketball. The gift is the largest single donation for women’s athletics at Columbia.
Scripps College, a women’s liberal arts educational institution in Claremont, California, has received a $15 million gift from the Carolyn Lake Claremont Foundation. This total includes a previously announced $5.2 million gift from the foundation and completes a multi-year philanthropic commitment to phase one of Scripps’ Centennial Plaza Project. Once complete, the project will link the college’s Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery and Garrison Theatre in the Performing Arts Center into a vibrant hub for creativity and connection. Phase one of the project includes the construction of the Carolyn Lake Dance Center.