Penn Gets $225 Million for Its School of Medicine

 

The University of Pennsylvania has received a $225 million gift, the largest in its history, from Raymond G. Perelman and his wife, Ruth, for its medical school, which will be renamed the Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

“I look at it as Penn Medicine gave me a gift,” Mr. Perelman said. “They offered me an opportunity to have my name on one of the best medical schools in the country.” Mr. Perelman, 93, a trustee of the school, is president and chairman of the board of RGP Holdings Inc., a privately held company with manufacturing, mining and financial interests.

Amy Gutmann, the president of the university, said the Perelmans’ gift was transformational.

“It’s the triple crown for our school of medicine,” she said. “It’s going to enable us to have the best students, with enormously increased financial aid, and to recruit the most eminent faculty and provide extraordinary research.”

The Perelmans’ donation will establish a permanent endowment that will be used, in part, to enable the medical school to increase its financial aid budget by at least 20 percent for the class entering in 2012.

“We lose some students because they feel that they can’t take the large loan burden, or we get them, but they feel pressured to go into the highest paying fields of medicine, rather than follow their passions,” Dr. Gutmann said.

Mr. Perelman said he expected the school to expand in the coming years to meet a growing demand for doctors. Dr. Gutmann, who began discussing the gift with Mr. Perelman more than a year ago, said his donation might make that possible.

“With this kind of resources, in perpetuity, we can sit down and contemplate admitting more students,” she said. “It’s going to allow us to fulfill some of our wildest dreams, and high on our list of dreams is being able to train more doctors.”

The Perelmans are two of Philadelphia’s most prominent philanthropists. They have supported other projects at the medical school, including a professorship in internal medicine and a $25 million 2005 gift to create the Ruth and Raymond Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine. They have also made large gifts to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and many Jewish cultural and welfare organizations.