COLUMBUS — Ohio University officials garnered several standing ovations today during an announcement that the university will receive $105 million, the largest gift in the history of Ohio’s public higher education.
The Osteopathic Heritage Foundations awarded the gift to OU's College of Osteopathic Medicine, bringing the total funds the college has received from the foundations to almost $123 million since 1999.
The $105 million gift is equal to about one-fourth of OU's entire Athens campus budget, which totals about $398 million.
According to research the university has conducted, this is the largest award ever given to an Ohio college or university. It is also the fourth largest gift ever given to a medical school in America, and it ranks among the top 50 gifts ever given to higher education institutions in the United States, OU President Roderick McDavis said at the event.
“This is going to transform the College of Osteopathic Medicine for perpetuity,” McDavis said. “It will lift the college to a level of being one of the very best medical schools in the United States, (and it will) lift the hopes of the entire university to be far greater than we are today.”
This gift is based on a long-term plan the college presented to the foundations, and the university has known about the gift now for some time, said Jack Brose, dean of OU's College of Osteopathic Medicine.
“We had some idea, but when I saw the actual amount and knew it was really going to happen, it was very emotional,” Brose said. “I was bowled over.”
The college will use the gift to initiate a number of new programs during the upcoming years, including a regional extension campus in Columbus as well as diabetes and neuromuscular-skeletal centers in Athens.
The first project the college will undertake will be the creation of the regional extension campus. The college will receive money for each project as it begins.
The money will be given to the university in increments, likely over the next 15 or 16 years, said Richard Vincent, president and CEO of the Osteopathic Heritage Foundations, after the event. He added that OU should receive the first installment this school year.
Vincent made the announcement today at the Ohio Osteopathic Symposium at the Hilton Easton in Columbus.
“We have never considered a grant or award of this magnitude, nor have we considered an award that will have the potential impact this one will have,” Vincent said in a video that was shown at the ceremony.
OU has also renamed its college the Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine. The university has the only osteopathic medical college in Ohio.
“Named colleges are rare gifts in the realm of public higher education; they are also powerful gifts … just as the names Scripps and Russ have come to signify academic distinction in the realms of communication and engineering, and the recently named Patton College has come to signify distinction in education,” said Pam Benoit, OU’s executive vice president and provost.
In the past several years, the foundations also made large donations to help fund the opening of OU’s Academic and Research Center and the newly renovated Heritage Clinical Training and Assessment Center & Community Clinic.
“I think this is an indication of faith in the college by the foundations, and we fully intend to live up to that,” Brose said.
— Pat Holmes contributed to this report.
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