At least a portion of a $72-million pledge to Duke University remains unpaid seven years after it was made by a former chairman of the university's Board of Trustrees, The Chronicle, a student newspaper at Duke, reported today. The pledge, made by Peter and Ginny Nicholas and mostly intended for Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment, was unpaid when William Schlesinger, a former dean of the Nicholas School, left in 2007, he told the newspaper. Mr. Nicholas told the paper that his family had paid a significant portion of the pledge and planned to fulfill the remainder in "due course." Duke declined to say how much of the pledge had been paid.

A longtime fund raiser at St. John's University in New York has been charged with stealing more than $1-million from the university and using the money to pay for shopping trips, casino visits, and her son's law-school tuition, the Associated Press reported. Cecilia Chang, who was suspended by the university last year, is accused in a 205-count indictment of grand larceny, forgery, and other charges, according to a news release from the district attorney for Queens, N.Y. Her lawyer says Ms. Chang denies the charges and used the money for the benefit of the university.

Georgetown University announced today that it had received its largest donation ever, an $87-million estate gift to create an endowment for medical research at the university's medical center. The gift, from the estate of Virginia Toulmin, who died in June, started as a $1.2-million trust established by her late husband, Harry J. Toulmin. Ms. Toulmin, who had been a member of the university's Board of Regents and of the Board of Visitors for its nursing school, increased the trust to its current size. Mr. Toulmin's grandfather was the first graduate of Georgetown's medical school and was later an anatomy professor there.

Lee T. Todd Jr., president of the University of Kentucky, announced today that he would step down after more than 10 years on the job, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported. Mr. Todd, 64, said at a news conference that he would leave on June 30, 2011. Mr. Todd, a former engineering professor and entrepreneur who built and sold two successful companies, gained attention for his ambitious Top 20 Business Plan, which aimed to make the university into a top-20 public research institution by 2020. Mr. Todd said in 2009 that the university was making progress toward the goal but was hampered by fiscal challenges and state budget cuts.

While 67 percent of all college fund-raising jobs are held by women, they occupy a significantly smaller percentage of the top fund-raising posts at the colleges with the most successful development programs, according to a new survey by The Chronicle of Philanthropy. The Chronicle, which looked at the top fund raisers for the charities on its 2009 Philanthropy 400 list  (ranked by private-donation revenue), found that out of 119 colleges and universities, 61 percent had a man in the top fund-raising position, while 39 percent had female leaders. Just 3 percent of the top fund raisers were members of minority groups, who make up 8 percent of all college fund raisers. Higher education had a lower percentage of female top fund raisers than the average for all charities (52 percent women) and for most other types of charities, except religious organizations and Jewish federations.

Connecticut's attorney general, Richard Blumenthal, has announced that he is joining Wesleyan University in taking legal action against its former chief investment officer, who is accused of misusing institutional funds for a trip to the Super Bowl and for other personal and businesses expenses. Mr. Blumenthal, who is running for the U.S. Senate, is suing Thomas Kannam and three private companies with which Mr. Kannam had business ties. The attorney general says they misused Wesleyan's endowment assets in violation of state law. Wesleyan sued Mr. Kannam late last year. Through a lawyer, Mr. Kannam denied all of the allegations. 

A fund raiser for Binghamton University, who sued the university over allegations that two senior athletics-department officials tried to use her as a "sexual plaything," has settled with the institution for $280,000, according to a report by the Fox television station in Binghamton. In the settlement, Elizabeth Williams agreed to resign from her position and not apply for another job at the university, which is part of the State University of New York. Binghamton said in a statement that while it was confident in its legal position, litigation would have been costly and distracting.

Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates have persuaded 40 of America's billionaires to commit to giving the majority of their wealth to charity, and many of them are well-known donors to higher education, The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports. Among those who joined the Giving Pledge are T. Boone Pickens (Oklahoma State), Pierre and Pam Omidyar (Tufts), Sanford I. and Joan Weill (Cornell), and Kenneth G. and Elaine Langone (New York University). Others on the list have given to a variety of institutions, including Creighton University, Purdue University, Santa Clara University, the University of Nebraska, and the University of San Diego. See a list of major private gifts to higher education here.

In the six months since the Stevens Institute of Technology signed an agreement with the New Jersey Office of the Attorney General to overhaul its finances and improve its oversight, a court-appointed supervisor says the college has made significant progress in meeting those goals, The Star-Ledger of Newark reports. The institute has appointed its provost, George Korfiatis, as interim president and is searching for a new president. Meanwhile, Stevens is said to be near an agreement with its former president, Harold J. Raveché, that will require him to pay back the money he borrowed from Stevens to buy vacation homes.  

A major donor to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor's business school has been charged with a vast securities fraud and accused of using his ill-gotten gains to make a $10-million gift to the university, The New York Times reports. Samuel Wyly, an alumnus of Michigan, and his brother, Charles Wyly, were accused by the Securities and Exchange Commission of conducting a $550-million securities fraud and of insider trading. The brothers, who are from Dallas and are major donors to conservative and other causes, said through a lawyer that the charges were without merit.