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Gifts totaling over $50 million from an anonymous donor are helping researchers in the University of Arizona astronomy department develop technology that could make space telescope missions quicker, more efficient and more cost-effective.

December marks the 10th anniversary of Richard F. Caris’ $20 million gift to the University of Arizona’s astronomy department — a gift that enabled the U of A to become one of 14 founding partners in the Giant Magellan Telescope, or GMT, observatory currently under construction in the Atacama Desert of central Chile.

In high school, first-year Neuroscience and Cognitive Science major Daniella
Bone suffered an injury that forced her to write with her non-dominant hand
for five months. She was drawn to the neuroscience program at the University of Arizona but couldn’t reconcile costs with her internship ambitions and plans to study
abroad. Then, she applied for — and won — a Mars Science Plus Scholarship.

“I like to do hands-on stuff outside,” says Keyan, a seventh grader at Mansfeld Magnet Middle School in Tucson. And thanks to a $1 million gift from the Sprouts Healthy Communities Foundation — a corporate foundation of Sprouts Farmers Market Inc. — more hands-on gardening experiences are on the horizon for Keyan and thousands of other kids.

In November 2023, the University of Arizona’s Indigenous Resilience Center, or IRes, announced the receipt of a $2 million award from the Waverley Street Foundation. The award is unique in allowing the center, which was founded in 2021, to bolster and develop its operations while also becoming a source of support to tribal groups in the region through the distribution of smaller grants.

In 2021, Ken Coit ’67 made a $50 million gift to name the R. Ken Coit College of Pharmacy and set it on a path to unparalleled excellence. At the time, Coit declared it his dream to see Arizona’s pharmacy program ranked as one of the top three in the country. Since he made his transformational gift in 2021, the Coit College of Pharmacy has climbed to No. 4 in Blue Ridge Rankings for NIH funding.

Arizona is facing a severe shortage of primary care providers, and, based on data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, nearly 70% of communities designated as primary care Health Professional Shortage Areas are in rural parts of the state.

An anonymous gift is fueling cross-disciplinary collaboration at the Center for University
Education Scholarship.

In 2021, the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona opened the 2,131-square-foot Alice Chaiten Baker Interdisciplinary Gallery, the center’s first on-site gallery expansion in over two decades.

The Lovejoy Center aims to protect biodiversity through policy.