August 18, 1997

UCSC receives $13.5 million in private gifts and grants for record-breaking year

By Francine Tyler

UC Santa Cruz received more than $13.5 million in private support in the form of gifts and grants during the fiscal year that ended June 30--the highest total recorded in UCSC's 32-year history, according to the Development Office.

The total was more than double that received by the university in the previous year, when $6.1 million was contributed to campus programs, scholarships, and fellowships. The previous fund-raising record of $9.3 million was set in 1994-95.

This year's total included a $5-million gift from philanthropist and UC Santa Cruz Foundation trustee Jack Baskin. Baskin's gift, by far the largest in campus history, helped launch UCSC's first professional school, the Jack Baskin School of Engineering.

"Alumni, parents, friends of the university, corporations, foundations, and others demonstrated tremendous support for UC Santa Cruz this year through their giving," said Daniel G. Aldrich III, assistant chancellor for University Advancement. "Our extraordinary gift for the Baskin Engineering School capped an outstanding year of private support."

New records were set by a number of UCSC's fund-raising programs. Annual Fund contributions--primarily consisting of annual gifts from alumni and parents and matching funds from corporations--totaled nearly $1.1 million, a 22 percent increase over the previous year. The Telephone Outreach Program raised $810,607, an increase of 34 percent over last year's total, and parent donors contributed nearly $675,000, 61 percent more than last year.

The bulk of the funding came from the following sources: individuals other than alumni and parents, 55 percent; foundations, 14 percent; the business sector, 14 percent; and alumni and parents, 10 percent. Other sources included trusts and bequests and campus and community organizations.

"We are grateful to a lot of people, including our Foundation trustees and UCSC faculty and staff, for their efforts on the university's behalf in generating private gifts and grants this year," Aldrich said. "Private support will become even more important as we grow as a campus. It's at the core of our ability to provide access to a quality education for all of California's qualified citizens."

Major private gifts or grants received by UCSC during the past year included:

• A gift of $250,000 from Narpat and Chandra Bhandari of Los Gatos, which established the Chandra Bhandari Chair in India Studies. The endowment will support an interdisciplinary approach to studying historical and modern Indian cultures both on the subcontinent and around the world.

• A preliminary distribution of $207,000 from the estate of UCSC Professor Emeritus Siegfried "Sig" Puknat, which will establish the Siegfried B. and Elisabeth Mignon Puknat Music Endowment and support UCSC's Literary Studies Endowment. Puknat died in March of this year.

• A gift of $100,000 from David S. Lee, chairman of CMC industries in Santa Clara and a member of the UC Board of Regents. Lee's gift established an endowed scholarship fund for the Jack Baskin School of Engineering. Two of Lee's three children are UCSC graduates.

• A contribution of computer equipment valued at more than $300,000 to the school of engineering from Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). The equipment will greatly expand the capacity of UCSC's cutting-edge research in computational biology. The work is an important part of the Human Genome Project, an international effort to map human genetic makeup.

• A donation of more than $35,000 from UCSC's class of '77--the largest gift ever made by an alumni class--to the UCSC Alumni Association Scholarship Fund.

• A pledge of more than $300,000 to the UCSC Arboretum from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. The funds will provide general operating support for the Arboretum over the next three years, including support for the development of long-range financial and fund-raising plans for the Arboretum's world-renowned horticultural collection.

• A significant augmentation of the Paul and Anne Irwin Unitrust which will ultimately benefit the Joseph M. Long Marine Laboratory.

• The creation of the John and Layne Halliday Unitrust which will ultimately help support the marine laboratory, the Alfred E. Heller Endowed Chair in Agroecology, and the Astronomy and Astrophysics Department.

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