Pictured Above: Kate Tiedemann (left) and Ellen Cotton have donated more than $15 million to USF St. Petersburg.
Courtesy of USF St. Petersburg
By Crow’s Nest Staff
The biggest donors in USF St. Petersburg history have come through again.
Philanthropists and retired business leaders Kate Tiedemann and Ellen Cotton have donated $1 million to create an endowed business professorship on campus.
Tiedemann, who immigrated to the United States when she was 16 and eventually founded an ophthalmic surgical supply business, donated $10 million to the university in 2014.
Five years later, she and Cotton, her spouse and a former small business owner, donated $3 million to endow the dean’s position at the College of Business, which bears Tiedemann’s name. The building’s atrium is named for Cotton.
Once consolidation takes effect in July, the college will become the Kate Tiedemann School of Business and Finance in the Muma College of Business, which is based on the Tampa campus.
In April, Tiedemann and Cotton gave $50,000 to help provide emergency financial support to students facing hardships because of the coronavirus epidemic.
And now they have donated $1 million to create the Tiedemann-Cotton endowed professorship in finance.
Its first recipient will be Gary Patterson, a professor of finance and associate dean who was acting dean of St. Petersburg’s College of Business in 2014-2016.
