The "Cowell" in Cowell Student Health Center is the San Francisco-based S.H. Cowell Foundation, named after Samuel Henry Cowell of the family that also paid for UC Berkeley's Cowell Hospital.

But just as there is no more Cowell Hospital at Cal, there will be no more Cowell in the name of Davis' Student Health Center when it is replaced by the Health and Wellness Center.

In the mid-1960s, the foundation paid for the Student Health Center's expansion, which cost nearly $564,000. Today, however, the 51-year-old Cowell foundation no longer funds health clinics or other medical service projects.

The family patriarch was Henry Cowell, who established the Henry Cowell Lime and Cement Co. in Santa Cruz. The family owned real estate in Yolo County, Northern California and Washington state, with holdings that included commercial buildings, ranches, limestone quarries, cement mills and timber tracts.

UC Berkeley's Cowell Hospital, torn down to make way for the Haas School of Business, was named after Henry Cowell's son Ernest, a Cal graduate.

The family provided a scholarship fund for students from Santa Cruz to attend UC. Eventually, the foundation sold part of the family's Santa Cruz property to UC — and the land became home to UC Santa Cruz, covering more than 2,000 acres.

In 1906, the family helped establish the San Francisco earthquake relief fund. S.H. Cowell's sisters, Isabella and Helen Cowell, built the Lighthouse for the Blind building in San Francisco, and donated a jade and art collection to the M.H. de Young Museum and the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, both in San Francisco.

S.H. Cowell worked to conserve California coastal areas and gave land for Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park in Santa Cruz. He died in 1955, and the foundation was established the next year with money from his estate.

Today, according to the foundation's Web site, grant money is targeted to four program areas: affordable housing, family resource centers, kindergarten-through 12th-grade public education and youth development in specific small towns and neighborhoods of Northern California.

— Dave Jones