The University of Virginia’s College at Wise has received its largest ever donation, $11.2 million, from The Bill Gatton Foundation, the Wise County college announced Monday.
The late Carol Martin “Bill” Gatton, a successful businessman who owned the Gatton Automotive Group with dealerships in Kentucky and Tennessee, made significant gifts to the University of Kentucky and East Tennessee State University during his lifetime, and after his 2022 death, his Bristol-based foundation has made further donations, including $2 million to Emory & Henry University in 2023.
According to U.Va. Wise’s announcement, the foundation’s donation will create six endowed funds and support:
The Chancellor’s Greatest Needs Fund, which includes the naming of a hospitality suite and seating box at the David J. Prior Center, which hosts sporting events and concerts;
Naming of the Bill Gatton Department of Nursing;
Naming of the Bill Gatton Department of Technology Management and Data Analytics, and construction of the department’s new building;
Creation of the Bill Gatton Scholars Program, with three new scholarship funds. U.Va. will match this donation with $4.5 million.
Creation of the Rachel Clay-Keohane Mathematics Fund to honor the longtime U.Va. Wise faculty member, alumna and head coach of the college’s women’s basketball team;
Support and naming of the Bill Gatton Softball Field.
“To say this gift will be transformative doesn’t really capture the monumental impact that it will have,” Donna P. Henry, U.Va. Wise’s chancellor, said in a statement. “Every future student at the college will benefit from this gift.”
With U.Va.’s scholarship matching funds, the Gatton Foundation’s gift will add $15.7 million to the school’s $166 million endowment, according to the announcement.
The University of Virginia on Friday dedicated the Ramon W. Breeden Jr. Commerce Grounds plaza and officially named “Breeden Way,” located adjacent to the McIntire School of Commerce.
The honor is in recognition of Breeden’s legacy as founder and chair of Virginia Beach-based real estate company The Breeden Co., as well as his philanthropy to U.Va., his alma matter, according to a media advisory.
In September 2023, U.Va. announced Breeden, a 1956 McIntire graduate, had given $50 million to support business education and athletics. The gift was divided between the university’s McIntire Expansion Project, a renovation and expansion of U.Va’s commerce school, and the Virginia Athletics Master Plan.
“The McIntire School broadened my education and gave me confidence in myself. I have many friends who attended Ivy League schools, and I can stand toe to toe with them in business, as I got just as good an education and, in some cases, better,” Breeden said in an interview with Virginia Business earlier this year. “McIntire taught me not to give up and to keep pushing on in life.”
The McIntire expansion includes construction of a new building, Shumway Hall, on the southeast corner of U.Va’s lawn as well as a renovated Cobb Hall and a host of outdoor meeting areas, expanded walkways and green spaces.
The athletics plan calls for a new athletics complex, including a 90,000-square-foot home for U.Va’s football program, an Olympic sports center to support to more than 750 student-athletes and the Center for Citizen Leaders and Sports Ethics. Cavaliers celebrated the opening of the 93,000 square-foot football operations center facility opened on June
Breeden, who founded the real estate development company in 1961, served as a member of the McIntire Foundation Board from 1994 to 1996 and also served on its advisor board. In January 2022, he stepped down as president and CEO of his company, naming Timothy Faulkner his successor. Breeden also co-founded Commerce Bank, which was purchased by Branch Bank & Trust, and he then served as a state director of BB&T, now part of Truist Financial Group.
Gerald “Jerry” Yagen, founder of the Aviation Institute of Maintenance and Centura College, has made a $100 million gift to Virginia Beach’s Military Aviation Museum, including his private collection of 70 vintage military aircraft, the museum announced last week.
In the 1990s, Yagen began collecting aircraft from the first 50 years of aviation history, from the Wright Brothers’ flight in 1903 to the Korean War in the early 1950s, planes that were originally stored in hangars in Suffolk. In 2008, he opened the Military Aviation Museum in Virginia Beach, allowing the public to see the collection. Yagen’s gift includes the 130 acres where the museum sits, an airfield at 1341 Princess Anne Road, and $30 million to start an endowment for the museum. The gift was announced Oct. 5 at the museum’s annual Warbirds Over the Beach air show.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin thanked Yagen, his wife, Elaine, and their family for the gift in a statement. “It’s due to great Virginians like the Yagens that our commonwealth is the best place to live, work and raise your family.”
The museum, which now has about 250 volunteers, is run by Keegan Chetwynd, the museum’s director and CEO, who has shepherded it from a private collection to an independent nonprofit. About 85,000 visitors come to the museum annually, according to the announcement. Many of the aircraft are still flyable, and on Thursday, a World War II-era plane from the collection carried a load of baby formula, diapers and other necessities to western North Carolina to assist victims of Hurricane Helene, in partnership with the Virginia Beach Fire Department.
“In the beginning, I saw this as my personal challenge to preserve history and these beautiful warbirds,” Yagen said in a statement. “I just didn’t want to see them disappear to time. I never believed so many would volunteer so much to help Elaine and I do this. I realize it is no longer an individual challenge.”
Who are Virginia’s most powerful and influential leaders in business, government, politics and education this year? Find out in the fifth annual edition of the Virginia 500: The 2024-25 Power List.
Carilion Clinic will soon break ground on a new building for an expanded cancer program thanks to a $25 million gift from a Star City family, the largest ever made to the nonprofit health care system.
The gift from former Advance Auto Parts CEO Nicholas Taubman, also a past U.S. ambassador to Romania, and his wife, Jenny, will help establish the Carilion Taubman Cancer Center.
The seven-story facility will be located at Carilion’s Riverside Campus. It is a planned upgrade for the current Carilion cancer treatment center, which was built in 1980 and sits on South Jefferson Street.
“We wanted not just to replace the cancer center but create a new environment — a whole ecosystem for advanced clinical care, new therapies and research — with our partner Virginia Tech,” says outgoing Carilion CEO Nancy Howell Agee, who announced her retirement in July. Carilion President Steve Arner is set to succeed her as CEO on Oct. 1.
Agee, who will serve as CEO emeritus through September 2025, focusing on phil-anthropy, should have plenty to keep her busy. With the Taubmans’ gift, Carilion has raised more than $70 million of the expected $100 million cost of the cancer center, and Agee says Carilion is “actively fundraising” for the remainder.
For the Taubmans, their gift was an opportunity to drastically change the cancer treatment options for the 1 million people in Virginia and West Virginia served by Carilion. The new cancer facility will provide people in the Roanoke Valley and adjacent areas a closer option for treatments they currently travel out of the region to receive.
“People who have cancer, they have jobs, families. They have obligations. They can’t take a week to drive somewhere and get treatment,” Nicholas Taubman says. “It needs to be here.”
The Taubman family supports local health care in part because of an obligation to their former Advance Auto employees, according to Nicholas Taubman. Roanoke was the company’s headquarters from its founding in 1932 by Taubman’s father, Arthur, until 2018, when it moved to Raleigh, North Carolina.
“The people who worked for us live in this area … and all of these people need medical care,” says Nicholas Taubman, who says he no longer has a financial stake in Advance Auto.
Agee says Carilion will break ground on the new facility in October and expects doors to open in late 2026 or early 2027.
The five most popular daily news stories on VirginiaBusiness.com from July 15 to Aug. 15 included news of Liberty University and Jerry Falwell Jr. resolving their legal disputes.
Liberty University and its former president and chancellor, Jerry Falwell Jr., reached a global resolution agreement settling all three lawsuits between Falwell and the Lynchburg private Christian university. (July 26)
Philanthropist Jane Batten pledged $100 million to William & Mary to boost coastal and marine science research towards finding global solutions for flooding and sea-level rise. (July 24)
Henrico County’s economic development authority purchased The Crossings Golf Club and, with partners Pros Inc. and the Henrico Sports & Entertainment Authority, plans to pitch the course as the new home for a PGA Tour Champions golf event held at the Country Club of Virginia. (Aug. 8)
QTS Data Centers has secured ownership of all 622 acres of the recently rezoned site for the White Oak Technology Park II project in Henrico County’s Sandston area. (July 19)
Jane Batten, the matriarch of a Hampton Roads family known for philanthropy, pledged $100 million to William & Mary in July to boost coastal and marine science research toward finding global solutions for flooding and sea-level rise.
The newly named Batten School of Coastal & Marine Sciences will expand the Virginia Institute of Marine Science and allow it to hire more scientists whose research could have a worldwide impact, officials say.
Batten, whose late husband, Frank Batten, co-founded The Weather Channel and was chairman and CEO of Landmark Communications, set a record for the 331-year-old university’s largest donation. W&M officials also say the gift is “by a factor of four” the largest donation ever made to any research institution focused on marine and coastal science.
W&M hopes to raise $100 million more through private, state and federal sources to complement Batten’s donation, which will go toward the creation of a bachelor’s degree in coastal and marine sciences and building out the VIMS facility on the York River in Gloucester Point. President Katherine Rowe says about $50 million will go toward new learning and research spaces, although W&M is still determining whether to renovate existing structures, construct new buildings or both.
Rowe says that she and Batten have been discussing the gift for the past five years, and both women saw the possibility of expanding VIMS’ marine research to benefit coastal communities worldwide.
“There is no institution better positioned to address the environmental threats, the economic challenges that are faced in the world’s coastlines and oceans,” Rowe says. “We see the Batten School as powering at a much higher level the kinds of ‘science for solutions’ that William & Mary has been producing for decades, and to do that for Virginia, and more broadly to do that globally.”
Batten, whose family has made significant donations in the past to Old Dominion University, the University of Virginia, W&M and other institutions, said in a statement that she is “confident that this will spark significant change, building resilience in coastal communities in the commonwealth and across the globe for generations to come.”
Derek Aday, VIMS’ director and dean of the Batten School, says he hopes other philanthropists will follow Batten’s lead and contribute funding toward climate change research, coastal resilience and other environmental factors. “There will be imitators, as there should be.”
Jane Batten, the matriarch of a Hampton Roads family known for its philanthropy, has pledged $100 million to William & Mary to boost coastal and marine science research towards finding global solutions for flooding and sea-level rise, the Williamsburg university announced Wednesday. The newly named Batten School of Coastal & Marine Sciences will expand the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) and allow it to hire more scientists whose research could have a worldwide impact, officials say.
Batten’s donation is the largest in the 331-year-old university’s history, and W&M officials say the nine-figure gift is “by a factor of four” the largest donation ever made to any research institution focused on marine and coastal science. The donation will be used to build out VIMS’ site on the York River in Gloucester Point, and hire more researchers who can examine the impact of sea-level rise, storm intensity, flooding and other climate-fueled impacts on coastal communities.
The university’s existing School of Marine Science, renamed for Batten as of Wednesday, is located at VIMS’ facility, and although the Batten School’s construction plans and timeline have not yet been set, the school will remain at the VIMS site across from Yorktown on the York River, the university said in its announcement.
According to W&M, Batten’s gift will also go toward the creation of a bachelor’s degree in coastal and marine sciences, in addition to existing graduate and doctoral degrees offered at VIMS. The State Council for Higher Education in Virginia (SCHEV) must approve the new undergraduate major. The university also plans to expand interdisciplinary courses on marine and coastal sciences that non-major students can participate in.
W&M also hopes to raise $100 million more through private, state and federal sources to complement Batten’s donation. According to President Katherine Rowe, about $50 million of Batten’s gift will go toward campus infrastructure, including new learning and research spaces, but the university is still determining whether to renovate existing structures, construct new buildings or pursue a combination of both.
“This gift propels us forward toward great promise and progress,” Batten said in a statement. “I am confident that this will spark significant change, building resilience in coastal communities in the commonwealth and across the globe for generations to come.
“I’m calling on fellow philanthropists, government leaders, alumni and friends to join me in taking action,” she added. “I’ve always believed that philanthropy is not just something you should do, it is something that is a privilege to do. I’m privileged to be able to give to something that will be a game-changer for the world.”
Jane Batten. Courtesy William & Mary’s Batten School of Coastal & Marine Sciences
A Virginia Beach resident, Batten is a former W&M board member, as was her late husband, Frank Batten, who was chairman and CEO of Landmark Communications and a co-founder of The Weather Channel. The Batten family — including the couple’s children, Dorothy and Frank Batten Jr. — have made significant donations to William & Mary, the Slover Library in Norfolk, Hollins University, Old Dominion University, the University of Virginia and other state institutions over the years.
VIMS, a state agency charged with conducting research and providing scientific data on Virginia’s waterways to the commonwealth, was started in 1940 and was integrated with William & Mary in 1979. Over the past decades, VIMS has researched how to maintain and grow Virginia’s oyster and blue crab populations, monitor and forecast sea-level rise, and identify causes and risks of water pollution, among other subjects of study. In 2021, W&M started its Vision 2026 water initiative, in which the university pledged to study solutions to build coastal resilience not just in Virginia but worldwide.
Rowe noted in an interview with Virginia Business that just in the commonwealth, approximately 5 million people live on coastlines, and “many more than that are affected by the watershed at the Chesapeake Bay. In the U.S., that’s 128 million, and globally, 3.2 billion human beings.
“It became really clear to me that there is no institution better positioned to address the environmental threats, the economic challenges that are faced in the world’s coastlines and oceans, and it was starting at that point 30 or more years ago,” Rowe added. “William & Mary and VIMS have been at the vanguard of that kind of impactful research for a long, long time. So we see the Batten School as powering at a much higher level the kinds of ‘science for solutions’ that William & Mary has been producing for decades, and to do that for Virginia, and more broadly to do that globally.”
Derek Aday, VIMS’ director and dean of the Batten School, said that the donation has “transformed every aspect of our mission generationally. This is not like naming a building that eventually is torn down. This will affect our research, our teaching, our advisory service for generations to come.”
Both Aday and Rowe say they hope there will be other philanthropists who follow Batten’s lead and contribute funding to the issue of global warming, coastal resilience and other key environmental factors the world faces.
“There will be imitators,” Aday said, “as there should be. This is the leading edge.”
Inova Health System has raised $83 million over the past year, surpassing the “Schar Challenge” issued by donors Dwight and Martha Schar when they made a $75 million matching gift to Inova in May 2023.
The Schars’ most recent gift to support Inova’s heart and vascular services and the gifts to match it made by more than 10,000 donors brings the Falls Church-based health system’s total raised over the past year to $158 million, according to a Thursday news release.
Dwight Schar founded Reston-based Fortune 500 company NVR, one of the nation’s largest mortgage bankers and homebuilders, which operates under the Ryan Homes, NVHomes and Heartland Homes brands. Since 1993, the Schars have donated more than $126 million to Inova, including $50 million in 2015 to establish the Inova Schar Cancer Institute, the hospital system’s Fairfax County hub for cancer treatment and clinical trials, which opened in 2019.
“We are deeply grateful to Dwight and Martha Schar for their extraordinary generosity and powerful call to action, and also to our Northern Virginia community who, together, donated more than $80 million to Inova in just one year,” Inova President and CEO Dr. J. Stephen Jones said in a statement. “This tremendous achievement is a reflection of a community that cares deeply about having world-class health care locally. It’s a profound vote of trust and a testament to the spirit of giving that defines our Inova community.”
“Early on in this challenge, Martha and I shared our belief in the power of a single act of generosity to spark a wave of transformation — and our community has stepped up in a big way to show this is possible,” Dwight Schar said in a statement. “This is an important step, and I’ll say again: nothing is more important than having world-class health care available to every person in our community.”
Schar, 82, retired as NVR’s chair in 2022, after having previously served also as CEO. Since its founding in 1980, NVR has grown to employ more than 6,000 people, and for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2023, it reported $9.79 billion in revenue.
“Health care is No. 1 in my books; there’s nothing more important you can offer the community,” Schar told Virginia Business earlier this year. “The metropolitan Washington area has been very good to me and my business, so this is where I feel I can do the greatest good for the greatest number of people.”
Inova provides more than 4 million patient visits a year and employs more than 24,000 people across five hospitals and dozens of other facilities, including 37 primary care clinics and Northern Virginia’s only state-designated and nationally verified Level 1 trauma center.
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