Marquette on the move
In the first 12 weeks of 2021, Marquette University has announced seven major gifts fueling scholarships, bolstering emergency bridge funding and preserving one of our most sacred spaces, St. Joan of Arc chapel. The gifts will impact disciplines across campus, including nursing, neuro recovery, business, engineering, communications and dentistry.
In that time, we also broke ground on a new home for Marquette Business and innovation leadership programs. We have significant work ahead of us, especially given the unimaginable year, but make no mistake… Marquette is on the move.
January 2021
Mary Ellen and Dr. Scott Stanek, along with their family, committed a gift of more than $2 million to Marquette to support multiple scholarship funds, totaling $1.5 million, including both endowed funds and Marquette’s Bridge to the Future fund, which has provided support to hundreds of students experiencing financial strain from the coronavirus. Their gift will also impact the Dental School as well as the new home for Marquette Business and innovation leadership program.
February 2021
Darren and Terry Jackson said they were inspired by university leadership’s plans to significantly grow the number of Marquette Nurses around the world as well as by the many alumni courageously leading on the frontlines of the pandemic.
When announcing the $31 million gift, President Lovell said that he was “incredibly humbled” by Darren Jackson’s two-word response when he asked the couple what inspired their transformational gift.
“We believe,” Jackson said.
“Our country has been through a real challenge over the past year,” Terry Jackson said, a 1987 College of Nursing graduate. “Not only with the COVID crisis, but in the economic crisis and in the cries for social justice. Our goal is to help Marquette answer the call.”
St. Joan of Arc chapel, one of Marquette’s most sacred spaces, will be preserved far into the future, thanks to a gift of $1 million from the Slaggie Family Foundation. Last spring, university leaders conducted a historic structure report aimed at conserving the more than 600-year-old chapel for future generations. Originally built in France, the chapel was reconstructed on campus more than 50 years ago.
The gift from the Slaggie Family Foundation establishes an endowment dedicated to preserving the chapel’s distinctive medieval architecture, including the lintels, ceiling, flooring and roof. University Advancement is continuing to raise the remaining capital funding for the $3 million restoration project.
Town Bank President & CEO Jay Mack called their partnership with Marquette a “win-win.” Mack was interviewed as part of the Presidential Address after President Lovell announced that Town Bank would be naming the “Town Bank Gallery” within the new home for Marquette Business, thanks to a $2 million gift. “Since 2018 when we first joined forces, we have very much valued this mission-oriented partnership,” he said.
Thanks to a meaningful $1 million gift from an anonymous Marquette alumna, the university’s Neuro Recovery Clinic, located in the College of Health Sciences, now has additional resources to deliver life-changing therapeutic recovery for adults and children coping with spinal cord and brain injuries or degenerative diseases like Parkinson’s and multiple sclerosis.
The anonymous donor, a 1977 graduate of Marquette’s College of Nursing, has experienced such impact personally.
“We witnessed the incredible importance of personalized care in the neurological recovery of a family member,” she said. “Although the Neuro Recovery Clinic was not yet built when our son had his traumatic brain injury, the modalities that Marquette is providing allow patients’ neuroplasticity to flourish, leading them back to a life in the world, living independently and without assistance. In the course of our child’s recovery, we witnessed similar challenges from stroke patients, spinal cord injury patients, and those with degenerative diseases.”
