All Posts Tagged With: "donation"
Lazaridis donates $21 million to Waterloo
RIM founder’s gifts now total $123 million
The founders of Research In Motion (RIM), the Waterloo, Ont. based produce of BlackBerry products, have fallen. But one of them, Mike Lazaridis, is ready to make a new investment. He and his wife Ophelia pledged $21 million to the University of Waterloo on Wednesday. “History has shown us that a relatively small investment in fundamental research in physics and in science today can lead to huge innovation tomorrow,” Lazaridis said. The money will fund chairs in condensed matter and astrophysics, a new science building and scholarships for mathematics students. The couple have donated $123 million in total, after funding the Institute for Quantum Computing and the soon-to-open Quantum Nano Centre. To get a sense of how big those donations are, consider that only one gift to a Canadian university exceeded $20 million last year, reports Academica.
$100-million donated for Canada, Israel scholarships
STEM students will get $60,000 each
Seymour Schulich, who already has several Canadian schools named for him, has announced he has donated $100-million to fund scholarships in Canada and Israel, reports Shalom Life.
The Schulich Leader Scholarships are meant to increase enrollment in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) subjects, in order to spur innovation.
All graduating high school and CEGEP students in Canada and Israel who are planning to study STEM subjects may apply. Each winner will receive $60,000 over four years. Five Israeli and 20 Canadian Universities will award one scholar each in the first year of the program. After that it will grow 75 awards per year. United Jewish Appeal of Greater Toronto will administer the cash.
Schulich, a business leader, has already made donations that have resulted in the following things named for him: a medical and dentistry school at the University of Western Ontario, a library and a school of music at McGill University, a law school at Dalhousie University, an engineering school at the University of Calgary, an education school at Nipissing University and a business school at York University.
USask turns down $500,000 “race-based” donation
Says request for scholarship for “non-aboriginals” violates university policy
The University of Saskatchewan turned down a donation of $500,000 because the donor wanted the funds used to support scholarships for “non-aboriginal” students, reports the National Post.
The university states a race-based scholarship would violate both university policies and human rights legislation.
I’ve always been bothered by race-based scholarships because they do not directly target the factors that disadvantage students.
Yes, students of aboriginal backgrounds are more likely to be social-economically disadvantaged. Yes, the history of how we treated (and continue to treat in some cases) aboriginals has resulted in a lot of the disadvantages that aboriginal students face.
That said, the problem is not their race and I’ve always seen scholarships that use race as a determining factor leaving the impression that race may be the problem.
Bursaries should be targeted to the actual disadvantages they are supposed to address. I find it perfectly acceptable to have bursaries designed to assist students moving from a rural reserve into a university town. There are plenty of bursaries that have geographic restrictions. Having funds with the criteria of being a descendant of someone who was put in residential schools is acceptable. The trauma of those schools continues to be passed down generation by generation. It is actually targeting a real problem. A scholarship based purely on need would be even better.
Unless race is the problem then why do we use it as a criteria to find a solution? Simple: because it makes things easy. Why go further than the skin layer of the problem?
(Hattip: Dale Kirby)
Mystery donor gives more than $74m to female-led colleges
At least 15 schools received anonymous donations ranging from $1 to $10 million
NEW YORK – A mystery donor has gifted millions to at least 14 colleges run by women.
New York’s Hunter College said Monday it received $5 million in the fall and realized only recently that more than a dozen other colleges nationwide had received similar donations. Hunter College President Jennifer Raab says the money “couldn’t have come at a better time.”
The City University of New York school says the donor earmarked $4 million for scholarships.
The school will use the rest to update its library and give students more group study space.
At least 13 other schools with women presidents have received anonymous donations ranging from $1 million to $10 million in the last two months.
The gifts total at least $74.5 million so far.
- The Canadian Press
