Marquette University on Tuesday announced a $1.5 million gift from the
Eck Family Foundation to fund projects within the university’s College of Health Sciences as well as an upcoming expansion to the Athletic and Human Performance Research Center (AHPRC).
The portion of the gift earmarked for the College of Health Sciences will focus on highly innovative projects aimed at applying new technologies, novel therapies, and research to help address substance abuse disorders, a press release states, while the portion being directed to the athletic center will support the development of a new men’s basketball practice facility that will be created as part of the building’s expansion.
The first phase of the AHPRC opened in 2019. As the university community continues to build momentum in its Time to Rise campaign, donors have expressed a philanthropic interest in supporting the second phase of the project, university officials said. The facility remains in the fundraising and development phase.
Part of the Ecks’ gift will be dedicated to developing a network of collaborating scientists within the College of Health Sciences’ Integrative Neuroscience Research Center, including neuroscientists, clinicians and pharmaceutical experts focused on cognitive, emotional, and motivational regions of the brain to understand and address depression, neuropsychiatric disorders, addiction, spinal cord research and bodyweight regulation.
“Like so many families, ours has felt the impact of addiction and the difficulty in finding effective treatment,” said
Bob and Kim Eck of the Eck Family Foundation. “Finding funding for early-stage research can be very challenging. Our hope is that our gift leads to progress in developing new treatments that may free so many people from suffering.”
The College of Health Sciences has spent more than a decade working to develop world-class scientists in the critical areas of neuroscience, noted the college’s dean, Dr. William E. Cullinan.
“We sincerely appreciate this gift from the Eck family, which will accelerate our research efforts,” Cullinan said. “Our vision is ultimately to take the discoveries in our labs and translate them into breakthroughs for families who are searching for solutions.”
Giving back
The Ecks are both Marquette alumni. Bob, who served as the chair of Marquette’s Board of Trustees from 2020-23, graduated in 1980. Kim completed her degree in 2013 and is the director of the Eck Family Foundation.
“We are grateful for this remarkable, mission-focused gift from the Eck family. Their generosity will make a major impact on a pressing societal issue,” Marquette president Michael Lovell said. “This gift will further our progress as a research university known for excellence and innovation — an important theme in our new strategic plan — and take our Athletic and Human Performance Research Center to the next level.”
The Eck family has helped drive wellness progress across campus in recent years. In September 2022, Bob Eck announced the university’s plans to honor Michael and Amy Lovell within the university’s planned wellness tower in the newly renovated Wellness + Helfaer Recreation facility. Within four months, the university raised $5 million in honor of the Lovells, the press release states.
Leveraging seed money
Philanthropic seed funding like the Ecks’ often helps researchers advance scientific progress in ways they can then leverage into larger grant awards from the National Institutes of Health or other funding sources, according to the release.
In February, Lovell announced that the university surpassed the $750 million fundraising goal that the Marquette community had set as part of its Time to Rise campaign. He challenged the Marquette community to drive toward completion of the campaign in June 2024.
“We are very fortunate to have had two philanthropic leaders in Bob and Kim throughout our historic Time to Rise campaign,” said vice president for university advancement Tim McMahon. “This most recent gift reflects their values and beliefs both in the way we pursue scientific discoveries to treat addiction and the way we work to enhance the home for our flagship men’s basketball program.”
As the university continues to raise funds for a variety of construction projects on campus, it is also working on ways to cut the institution’s overall budget by $31 million over the next six years. It plans to reinvest 40% or $12.4 million of those funds into other funding priorities.
