At the Heart of Giving

Lee and Joe Jamail

Lee served on the Rice Board of Trustees and the Rice: The Next Century Campaign Leadership Committee. Joe and Lee are supporters of the Shepherd School of Music and are Rice Associates and members of the William Marsh Rice and Founder’s Societies.

Lee Jamail believes the board of trustees of a university knows best how to allocate donations. And Joe agrees. “We don’t put strings on the money we give because we don’t know how to run a university.”

When the Jamails made a sizeable gift during the Rice: The Next Century Campaign, Malcolm Gillis explained that Rice needed additional faculty chairs. “We know it’s important for the university to award chairs to deserving professors and to faculty it wants to attract,” Lee says.

As a result, their gift was used to endow two chairs: the Lee Hage Jamail Chair in Latin American Studies, currently held by Hispanic studies professor Beatriz Gonzalez-Stephan, and the Joseph D. Jamail Chair in Latin American Studies, held by anthropology professor George Marcus.

The Jamails’ generosity has enhanced the university in other ways over the years. By funding construction of the Jamail Plaza and fountain, they have beautified the outside of Baker Hall, home of the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy.

In 1996, the Jamails made another significant gift, a major portion of which was allocated to computational engineering and to the Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology. With this gift, and others, the Jamails have greatly assisted Rice’s exploration of promising new and emerging disciplines.

At the Heart of Giving - A gift of time