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USC Medical School to Get $110 Million

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TIMES EDUCATION WRITER

Hoping to elevate USC’s School of Medicine into the top tier of the nation’s medical schools, the W.M. Keck Foundation plans to donate $110 million to build research labs, hire preeminent faculty and provide student scholarships.

In recognition of the gift, the largest ever to a medical school, USC today will publicly rename the school after William Myron Keck, the founder of Superior Oil Co. who went on to establish one of America’s largest philanthropic organizations.

“We think that Los Angeles needs to have two world-class medical centers,” said Robert A. Day, Keck’s grandson, who runs the foundation. UCLA’s medical school already ranks in the top 10, and the Keck Foundation wants to boost the USC school’s national stature, he said.

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The grant is part of $1.5 billion that USC expects to be invested in its health sciences campus in Boyle Heights over the next decade, including $818 million from Los Angeles County to replace the aging County-USC Medical Center.

The first $20 million from Keck will go toward building a $40-million research center in neurogenetics, a hot field of study involving genetics and the workings of the human brain.

“We are going to build this new research building and fill it with some of the brightest minds in the world,” said USC President Steven B. Sample. “With this money, we’ll be able to pay them healthy salaries, pay their expenses and allow them to bring a couple of postdocs [researchers with doctoral degrees] with them.”

The $110 million from Keck is basically an enormous challenge grant. It will be parceled out to the school over the next decade provided USC raises $330 million in matching funds.

Most of the money will go into a permanent endowment that, through its investments, will generate income to support research and provide scholarships to medical students. But a stream of income for scholarships is probably half a dozen years away, said Dr. Stephen J. Ryan, the medical school’s dean.

More immediately, USC wants to build the Neurogenetics Institute. University officials are looking for a contributor to match the Keck $20 million for the building. If such a big donor emerges, both Keck and USC are willing to put his or her name on the building.

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USC also seeks donors willing to cough up $1 million apiece to set up endowments for 10 professorships. Keck is willing to match each $1 million.

Dr. Brian E. Henderson, director of the Neurogenetics Institute, said such a pool of funds will help assemble a stellar corps of researchers to enhance USC’s reputation as “a first-rate medical school.”

He plans to entice faculty from other medical schools and research labs with promises of lavish laboratory space and other benefits.

Henderson has his eye on some “genome jocks,” those hot-shot scientists involved in unraveling the mysteries of genetics by mapping every gene in the human DNA strand.

“We’re going to steal from the best,” he said.

In the various national rankings of medical schools, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, the University of Pennsylvania, Yale, Columbia, the University of Washington, UC San Francisco, Washington University in St. Louis, Stanford and UCLA are among the institutions that tend to cluster in the top tier. Most rankings are driven by the strength of research programs.

USC, by comparison, was ranked 23rd out of 125 medical schools by the Assn. of American Medical Colleges based on how it brings in federal research dollars. The USC medical school was listed 36th in the less-scientific rankings compiled by U.S. News & World Report.

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Simon Ramo, a rocket scientist who co-founded TRW Inc., was bothered that Los Angeles, the nation’s second-largest metropolis, does not have more than one top medical school, as do the New York, Chicago and Boston areas.

So as a board member on the Keck Foundation, he began to push for a financial “booster rocket” to propel USC’s medical school to greatness.

The school, he said, impressed foundation members with its progress over the years as a multifaceted medical research center.

Research Dollars Have Climbed

Historically, USC’s medical school focused on caring for poor patients at the USC physician-staffed county hospital. That emphasis has broadened in recent decades. USC opened the highly respected Doheny Eye Institute in 1975, the Kenneth Norris Jr. Comprehensive Cancer Center in 1983, and more recently the USC University Hospital with Tenet Healthcare.

The number of private patients (read: paying patients) treated by USC physicians has soared from 50,485 in 1990 to 257,360 last year. Sponsored medical research has climbed too, from $62 million in 1991 to $99 million last year.

Ramo said he was quite pleased Wednesday as he watched Keck and USC leaders sign a formal agreement. Linking USC to a charitable foundation with more than $1 billion in assets can only benefit the medical school in the long run, he said.

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“So long as the Keck name is on the medical school,” Ramo said, “the foundation will want to make sure it is as good as it can be.”

The Keck Foundation, based in Los Angeles, is second only to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in U.S. charitable organizations focused primarily on medical research, science and engineering.

It is perhaps best known for donating $130 million to build the world’s largest land-based telescopes, at the W.M. Keck Observatory atop Hawaii’s dormant Mauna Kea volcano.

The foundation also donated $50 million to launch a new graduate school as the seventh member of the Claremont Colleges. The Keck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Sciences will soon offer master’s degrees to train students for the burgeoning biomedical industry.

The Keck Foundation has been giving away all of this money because, well, it has to. Under state law, the charity must distribute a minimum of 5% of its assets every year. That translates to $80 million this year, given that its holdings have soared with the stock market to $1.6 billion.

Even in these days of ever-surging donations, the $110-million Keck gift is the largest to a medical school, edging out last year’s $100-million gift to Cornell Medical College.

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But UC San Francisco’s medical school may soon take the lead with a donation of possibly $240 million. UC officials don’t count the money as theirs--yet. That fortune, left by the late DHL Corp. founder Larry L. Hillblom for medical research and other causes, is tied up in lawsuits by potential heirs.

The Keck gift is also a coup for USC President Sample, who has made such fund-raising the hallmark of his administration. It’s the third nine-figure gift USC has received during his tenure.

The largest--$120 million--was donated in 1993 by publisher and philanthropist Walter H. Annenberg. Last year, biomedical entrepreneur Alfred E. Mann donated $100 million.

Sample attributed his success to two things: “A huge run-up in the stock market, and the increasing attitude of a large number of people that it may not be in the best interest of their kids to leave them with too much money.”

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Largest Donations to Universities

A planned donation of $110 million to USC’s School of Medicine by the W. M. Keck Foundation is among the largest donations to universities nationwide.

* Up to $240 million of the estate would establish the Larry L. Hillblom Foundation, which would support medical research at the university and other charities. UC officials are not yet counting on the money because the Hillblom estate is tied up in lawsuits.

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** Donation with a total estimated value of $125 million to $500 million includes an Italian estate, a collection of Renaissance art and at least $25 million in cash

Source: Chronicle of Higher Education

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