CULVER — Landmark Communications founder Frank Batten and his wife, Jane, who reside in Virginia Beach, Va., have given his alma mater, the Culver Academies, a two-part gift that could reach $70 million. Culver is a private secondary school in Culver.
The Batten gift to Culver includes a $20 million endowment for the creation of the Batten Fellows Program that will help ensure competitive salaries and professional development opportunities for Culver’s faculty, today and in the future.
The second part of the Batten gift, to be known as The Batten Leadership Challenge, is a commitment to match gifts up to a cumulative total of $50 million. The funds raised must be for endowment purposes only, as part of the school’s $300 million “By Example” campaign. The Batten Lead-ership Challenge will run until Jan. 31, 2010. It is believed to be one of the largest challenge grant programs for any secondary school.

If the school earns the full match for The Batten Leadership Challenge gift, it will bring the total commitment of the Battens to Culver to over $100 million. Frank and Jane Batten have already donated over $34 million to Culver, including a $20.8 million gift in 2003. Previous gifts established the Batten Scholars program which has enabled Culver to attract outstanding students from throughout the United States.
In making the gift, Batten said, “Culver was a very positive influence in my life at an impressionable age with its unique emphasis on individual responsibility, ethical decision-making, and student leadership. Jane and I are pleased to give back to present and future students what was given to me.”
John Buxton, Culver’s head of Schools, said “This is the gift every head of schools in the country dreams about. The Batten Fellows Program may be the most generous gift for faculty salaries in the history of secondary school philanthropy. The gift benefits those who make the real difference in students’ lives: the faculty. Culver may be the first school in the country to have such an endowment. We are extremely grateful to Frank and Jane Batten for making such a program possible for Culver. This gift will allow us to recognize excellence in teaching and to promote its faculty in a more appropriate way.”
James A. Henderson, the chairman of The Culver Educational Foundation Board, said, “Frank and Jane Batten have made a transformational gift to Culver. This magnificent gift is consistent with Frank’s strong advocacy of Culver’s emphasis on student leadership and character education and an endowment that can support it properly for students and faculty.
“The Batten Leadership Challenge is designed to give the Culver constituency the opportunity and inspiration to build Culver’s endowment rapidly to ensure we can offer our unique education in perpetuity,” added Henderson. “We are more than grateful; we are energized.”
Frank Batten, 81, is an emeritus member of The Culver Educational Foundation Board of Trustees on which he has served as a member and officer for 24 years.
He is a 1945 graduate of Culver Military Academy and a former student and instructor in Culver’s Summer Schools and Camps. After graduation from Culver,  Batten served in the Merchant Marines during World War II and received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
He is the retired CEO of Landmark Communications in Norfolk, Va. which he built from The Virginian Pilot and Ledger-Star Publishing Company into a major media player in newspapers, television, and internet markets.  Batten also served as chairman of the Associated Press from 1982 to 1987.
Landmark recently sold The Weather Channel to a consortium of NBC, Blackstone Management Partners, and Bain Capital Partners. Frank and Jane  Batten have been generous philanthropists to many institutions with a special emphasis on educational institutions they have attended or served in a leadership capacity.