The $175 million gift from The Morningside Foundation to UMass Chan Medical School was announced and lauded on Tuesday, Sept. 7, with a special meeting of the UMass Board of Trustees, a morning press event at the UMass Club in Boston and an afternoon celebration on the Worcester campus.
“As we embark on our next 50 years of excellence, we will do so with a new brand and public profile, one that unites and links a foundation with a long history of transformative philanthropy with a medical school recognized as the jewel in the crown of UMass,” said Chancellor Michael F. Collins, announcing the newly renamed UMass Chan Medical School and its three graduate schools: the T.H. Chan School of Medicine, the Tan Chingfen Graduate School of Nursing and the Morningside Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences.
Gerald Chan, representing The Morningside Foundation, explained why his family chose UMass Medical School.
“The present gift from The Morningside Foundation is intended to draw attention to the urgent need for supporting our state universities at a time when resources available to them lag far behind the resources available to the elite private universities,” said Chan, “notwithstanding the fact that it is the state universities that educate the vast majority of college students in this country. We as a society must renew our support for the public universities now.”
