<p>A UF alumnus gave the Levin College of Law a $600,000 endowment that will go toward creating a lecture series for law students, the college's dean said Tuesday. </p>
<p>Dean Robert Jerry said UF law school alumnus Lewis Schott, an investor from Palm Beach, intended the gift to be a tribute to former UF President Marshall Criser, also a law school alumnus. </p>
<p>"Mr. Schott is a good, personal friend of Mr. Criser and felt he wanted to make a gift that would benefit the students at the law school," Jerry said. </p>
<p>The gift is eligible to be matched by state funds and could potentially be worth more than $1 million. </p>
<p>The lecture series, which will be named the Marshall M. Criser Distinguished Lecture Series, will bring at least two prominent speakers from the legal profession to campus each year, Jerry said. </p>
<p>He hopes to have the first lecturer come speak in the Fall, he said. </p>
<p>In an interview Tuesday, Criser said that without private donations like Schott's, the university would not have been able to achieve what it has over the years because it receives insufficient support from the state. </p>
<p>"UF has raised $1.5 billion since 1985," Criser said. "Without that resource, it could not have accomplished what it has. The state support of public education is, in my judgment, poor." </p>
<p>Criser said he has known Schott since the 1980s when, as UF's president, he went to New York to visit Schott during a fund-raising campaign. </p>
<p>"At that time, UF had never had a capital campaign, and I was told there was a prominent alumnus up there who had had no contact with UF since he had left," Criser said. </p>
<p>"I went to go meet him, and this is just one of several major gifts he's made over the years," Criser said. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.alligator.org/pt2/070207gift.php%5B/url%5D">http://www.alligator.org/pt2/070207gift.php</a></p>