Saving George Washington’s Birthplace
In the 1920s, a group of public-spirited women became interested in preserving the lands where George Washington had been born, and erecting a Tidewater plantation house similar to the one Read more…
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Ellison Medical Foundation
In the 1990s, Oracle software founder Larry Ellison developed a friendship with Nobel-winning molecular biologist Joshua Lederberg of Rockefeller University. This led in 1997 to establishment of the Ellison Medical Read more…
Stowers Institute for Medical Research
Jim Stowers founded Twentieth Century Mutual Funds at his kitchen table in 1958. A low-cost investment vehicle for small investors, the company began with initial capital of $107,000. By the Read more…
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
In 1953, the eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes created a medical institute devoted to basic research, then gave it entire ownership of his Hughes Aircraft Company. The institute was intended to Read more…
A Chinese Rhodes Scholarship
Stephen Schwarzman, co-founder of the Blackstone private equityinvestment company, has focused his philanthropic giving on learning, including long-time support of Catholic schools in New York City and a $100 million Read more…
Easy Online Learning
So-called “distance learning” has been available to disciplined students for generations, with instruction and degrees available by mail, television, even radio. The Internet, though, opened yawning opportunities for new forms Read more…
Wielding Litigation to Improve Student Opportunities
In 2014, a verdict arrived in the Vergara v. California case—in which nine school children brought suit arguing that provisions of state law that block the firing of poor teachers Read more…
New Orleans School District Goes All-charter
Before Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans public schools were the worst district in the second-lowest-performing state in the entire U.S. Fully 78 percent of NOLA students attended a school designated as Read more…
Protecting NYC Charter Schools From Political Opponents
New York City is home to one of the most successful charter-school expansions in the U.S., from its initial handful of students in the fall of 2000 to 95,000 enrollees Read more…
Putting a Bloomberg on the Hopkins Rose
In 2013, data entrepreneur Michael Bloomberg made a $350 million gift to Johns Hopkins University. The large donation was structured to fund 2,600 scholarships for needy students, and to create Read more…
Boston’s No-lemons Charter Schools
By 2013, the charter schools in many U.S. cities were beginning to pile up remarkable achievement records, but the accomplishments of Boston’s philanthropically supported charters were in a category by Read more…
Mellon Parklands
Out of the bank he established in Pittsburgh in 1869, Thomas Mellon left behind both a fortune and a string of descendants who variously increased those funds and gave them Read more…
Noble Research Institute
Lloyd Noble was an Oklahoman who taught in rural schools before buying an oil-drilling rig with a loan from his mother. In 1926 he struck gold—or its liquid equivalent—and became Read more…
Appalachian Trail
In 1921, an article was published in the Journal of the American Institute of Architects proposing a series of trail-connected camps along the Appalachian Mountains. Very soon, volunteer crews of Read more…
Hawk Mountain
Hawk Mountain is regularly mistaken for a public park, whereas it’s actually a classic example of a concerned citizen taking action on her own. A series of ridges in the Read more…
Mount Katahdin and Baxter State Park
Mount Katahdin, at 5,269 feet, is the highest peak in Maine and the terminus of the Appalachian Trail. The surrounding area features hundreds of lakes, streams, and waterfalls, wildlife are Read more…
Hunter-led Wildlife Recoveries
Experience from the last 85 years shows that people who stalk and harvest animals are often the best at saving them. The Dust Bowl droughts of the 1930s decimated North Read more…
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
In the early 1920s, Wickliffe Rose of the Rockefeller Foundation began conversations with the director of the U.S. Marine Biological Laboratory about the need for better understanding of the oceans. Read more…
Great Smoky Mountains
John Rockefeller Jr. had already catalyzed creation of a national park at Acadia in Maine, and set events in motion for another at Grand Teton in Wyoming, when in 1928 Read more…
Acadia National Park
Maine’s Acadia National Park mixes ocean, forest, and mountains in combinations of legendary beauty. It is a product of the tenacity of one George Dorr, a Bostonian with an inherited Read more…