An anonymous “parent couple” has matched the donations made to Georgetown by this year’s graduating seniors, according to an email sent by Class of 2011 fund co-chairs Kirsten Hardy (SFS’11) and Quinn Portfolio (COL’11).

“During yesterday’s convocation ceremony, an anonymous parent couple was deeply moved by the commitment to Georgetown that so many of us have demonstrated this year. Inspired by our dedication, they hope to encourage us to stay connected and committed to the university and each other, today and throughout our lives,” wrote Hardy and Portfolio in an email sent today to graduating seniors.

The co-chairs wrote that the Class of 2011 had managed to raise $58,446 from 1,065 seniors prior to yesterday’s commencement ceremony, noting that the donation stood as an all-time record for a graduating class.

The donation by the anonymous couple raises the total gift made by the recently-graduated class to $116,892.

Stemming from an approximately $75 million donation given in late 2008, Georgetown University has created four diverse field chairs in memory of Robert McDevitt (COL ’40) and his wife Catherine.

McDevitt left the University one-third of his estate prior to his death in September 2008. His wife died in April of the same year.

The McDevitts were devout Catholics—having also left significant donations to the Diocese of Syracuse and LeMoyne College—and the field chairs created are meant to reflect “areas of personal meaning to them that are so critical to our ongoing efforts to enhance our academic quality and Catholic and Jesuit mission,” according to President John Degioia.

Mark Murphy will be the Robert L. McDevitt and Catherine H. McDevitt chair for religious philosophy. James Freericks holds the same chair in physics, Ophir Frieder as the chair for computer science and information processing, and law professor Milton Regan as the chair in jurisprudence.

McDevitt ran the family funeral directing business, but made a significant amount of his fortune from IBM stock. His mother was the secretary to the president of the company’s predecessor and purchased stock in the company early in IBM’s history.

h/t and photo: Georgetown University News

Yesterday, Georgetown announced that it received $87 million—the largest gift in University history—from the late Virginia Toulmin.

Toulmin, who passed away in June, donated the money to the University’s medical center with instructions that it be used to support medical research. The gift will fund the Warwick Evans and Mary Mason Washington Evans Medical Research Endowment, which is named after her husband’s grandparents.

“I am deeply grateful to Harry and Virginia Toulmin for their generosity and trust in Georgetown’s ability to use these resources to create knowledge that will make a meaningful difference in the lives of others,” President John DeGioia said in a press release.

After Harry Toulmin died in 1965, Virginia managed his $1.2 million charitable trust as it grew to its present-day value. As a longtime volunteer who served of the University’s Board of Regents, Medical Affairs committee, and School of Nursing Board of Visitors, she had always planned to donate the money to Georgetown.

“Harry really worshiped his grandfather, who was this great man—successful physician and prominent Washington figure,” she said in a 1997 interview. “[E]ven though he didn’t graduate from Georgetown, Harry loved his grandfather and his grandfather loved Georgetown.”

Otto and Jeanne Ruesch, left, with Michael Kaiser

The Georgetown Medical Center recently received a $6.75 million gift to do research on colon, pancreatic and other gastrointestinal cancers, according to Blue and Gray.

The gift comes from Jeanne Ruesch, whose husband, local businessman and philanthropist Otto Ruesch, died of pancreatic cancer in 2004 at the age of 64.  Ruesch said that when her husband was diagnosed, she was shocked by how few treatments there were for pancreatic cancer.

The money will go towards creating the Otto J. Ruesch Center for the Cure of Gastrointestinal Cancers.  The center will focus on research, drug discovery and patient advocacy and will be part of the Medical Center’s Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Dr. John Marshall, Director of the new center and chief of hematology and oncology at the Georgetown University Hospital, told Blue and Gray that he thinks the new center will greatly further research on gastrointestinal cancers:

We have lost our way in gastrointestinal cancer research in this country. We have accepted that merely adding time to one’s life is adequate as a treatment goal and have gotten away from the charge of curing these cancers …

We are not going to solve everything within gastrointestinal cancer treatment within the walls of Georgetown. But we will provide a model for how to move forward.  If we’re right—and I believe we are—we will have a major impact on drug discovery and development and on bringing about a cure for these deadly cancers.

According to the awkwardly translated Bahrain News Agency, the Crown Prince of Bahrain visited campus on Wednesday and met with University President John J. DeGioia. The Bahrainis report that Sheikh Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa was looking in on the many Bahraini students at Georgetown and weighing the possibility of expanding post-graduate scholarships.

We got a tip that His Royal Highness had an 8:00 reservation for dinner at Morton’s and promptly dispatched a pair of paparazzi to grab a picture of the Prince with his reported team of nine body guards. The Prince was more clever, however, and snuck around into a back alley to enter through the restaurant’s kitchen.

University spokesperson Erik Smulson never got back to us to explain what the prince was doing on campus. What’s up with all these shadowy visits by Middle Eastern leaders, anyway?

Posted by Chris Stanton, News Editor