Georgetown wound up with an early Christmas this year—today, the Office of Communications announced that the University has received its largest philanthropic gift ever.  The late Robert McDevitt (COL `40), a Georgetown alumnus and former Regent of the school, donated $75 million, or about one third, of his estate to the school.

From the looks of it, most of the this money will go to fund faculty salaries and science and technology research at the school:

McDevitt directed that a portion of his estate establish a fund to endow faculty positions at Georgetown … The McDevitt gift will support faculty compensation and the research, technology, and staffing infrastructure necessary to create and support academic work of national and international distinction.

Georgetown is not the only institution that will benefit from McDevitt’s large, inherited estate (McDevitt inherited IBM stock from his mother, who was secretary to the company’s first president; he himself owned the family business, McDevitt Brothers Funeral Directors in Binghamton, NY).

The Diocese of Syracuse will receive a gift in excess of $30 million. McDevitt and his late wife Catherine also established the McDevitt Endowment at LeMoyne College, a Jesuit college in Syracuse, but not posthumously.

Thanks, Mr. McDevitt! And we thought the economic crisis might curtail philanthropy.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 10th, 2008 at 1:08 pm and is filed under News, Vox Populi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.