$15 million donation college’s largest
Donor Jack Garey, 88, calls Southwestern ‘a great school.’
Jack Garey, a philanthropist and retired businessman, has donated $15 million to Southwestern University in Georgetown for needbased scholarships, faculty chairs and other purposes, delivering the largest cash gift in the school’s 178year history.
Garey, 88, said he had pledged years ago to donate the money upon his death but decided to make the gift now to see its fruits benefit the small liberal arts college. In a similar way, Garey decided three years ago to donate his 525acre ranch to the city of Georgetown for a park.
The property borders the South San Gabriel River and includes two man-made ponds, several springs and a 6,000-squarefoot Tuscan-style villa. He also donated $5 million toward the park’s development.
“This unprecedented and transformative gift, which has been fully allocated to the university’s endowment, will build upon our reputation as a world-class institution,” said Edward Burger, Southwestern’s president.
Roughly 5 percent of the $15 million, or $750,000 in the early going, is expected to be spun off each year for financial aid, eight sabbatical semesters for tenured faculty members, five endowed chairs in natural sciences and “high-impact experiences” for 32 students such as study abroad.
In recognition of the gift and of Garey and his late wife, the university of about 1,400 students has elevated its natural sciences program to establish the Jack and Camille Garey School of Natural Sciences.
Garey said he believes that Southwestern, under Burger’s leadership, will play a major role in the evolution of higher education. The school is known for its Paideia program, an innovative curriculum that encourages students to think deeply — for example, about how a class in math connects with what they are learning in a literature course.
“Southwestern, I think, is a great school, small but very big in what it does,” said Garey, who served on the university’s Board of Trustees for 12 years before his appointment in 2017 as its second life trustee. Camille Garey, who died in 2012, also was a trustee.
The couple graduated from the University of Texas, and he worked as a trial lawyer in Austin for 15 years, branching out into real estate, ranching and construction. He ran Garey Construction Co. for 30 years.
A former facilities director at the University of Texas School of Law has been arrested and charged with six counts of tampering with government records as law enforcement authorities and university officials investigate allegations of questionable spending and fraud.
UT fired Jason Shoumaker in November. Internal auditors began looking into a complaint about Shoumaker’s spending the made in July by a co-worker, UT spokesman Gary Susswein said in a statement. UT police were notified, and the matter was referred to the Travis County district attorney’s office for a criminal investigation.
Court documents show Shoumaker, 39, had claimed he was reporting for work and collected pay when he was actually in Las Vegas, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Cozumel and other places. The documents also state Shoumaker had used fraudulent time sheets to try to get a larger employment separation payout after he was fired.
Shoumaker was arrested Thursday, and on Friday he still was being held at the Travis County Jail with bail set at $240,000, records show.
According to arrest affidavits filed against him, several co-workers told authorities that starting in 2016 they noticed he wasn’t showing up to work and “didn’t seem to be doing his job anymore.”
One colleague said she often covered for him and would send him text messages from time to time to see where he was, the court documents said. She said one week he texted he was on his way to work, but investigators found he was in Las Vegas at the time and his personal credit card had been used for taxi rides, professional massages and lunch at Hooters, according to the affidavits.
He had also charged meals, alcohol and rental cars in Flor-