Gibbons, a retired professor from the University of Alabama who now lives in Florida, earned her Ph.D. in statistics from Virginia Tech in 1962. She says she made the gift as an effort to enable the university to recruit the nation's best doctoral candidates in her field, and to help the United States remain the global leader in the discipline. "Statistics is my love," Gibbons said. "It's my vocation, as well as my avocation. I was so delighted when I discovered statistics ... and I think that it is a field that will always be of utmost importance."