Jason Koski/University Photography

President David Skorton and Jean Baderschneider, Ph.D. '78.

The ExxonMobil Foundation has given Cornell $595,970 through the foundation's Educational Matching Gifts Program.

The gift was presented to President David Skorton April 30 by Jean A. Baderschneider, Ph.D. '78 (ILR, collective bargaining and labor law history). Baderschneider is vice president of global procurement at ExxonMobil.

The foundation's matching gifts program allows ExxonMobil employees, retirees, surviving spouses and directors to make contributions to higher education institutions of their choice. The foundation matches $3 to every $1 up to $7,500.

Cornell received the fifth-largest gift out of 900 institutions that received matching gifts this year. The foundation seeks to improve U.S. math and science education by supporting math and science programs to "respond to the nation's growing need to produce more engineers and scientists and to develop more highly qualified math and science teachers to train the nation's youth."