Dallas-based University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, home to four active Nobel laureates, is one of the world’s foremost clinical and research institutions.
Boone Pickens has long supported the academic medical center, world-renowned for its research, widely respected for its teaching and training, and highly regarded for the quality of clinical care its faculty provides to patients at UT Southwestern University Hospitals & Clinics and its affiliated hospitals.
In the five years before establishing his foundation in 2006, Pickens had given a $1 million endowment fund to support heart research, plus $2 million to establish the Boone Pickens Fund for Cancer Research and Treatment, honoring Dr. Eugene Frenkel at UT Southwestern. In May 2007, Pickens announced an innovative $50 million grant to UT Southwestern’s Innovations in Medicine campaign to raise $500 million to help attract the world’s best scientists and clinicians and to support basic and clinical research as well as patient care and services.
“It is my desire to build a major legacy, which will help ensure the excellence of UT Southwestern in decades to come,” Pickens said at the time. “My Foundation will get a ten for one yield on its money, and that’s good for all of us.”
The gift created a special fund at the institution, requiring that it grow to $500 million within 25 years from earnings on the original principal and/or from new outside donations solicited by the institution. In recognition of the landmark gift, an 800,000-square-foot medical research and education facility on the UT Southwestern campus, finished in 2005, was named the T. Boone Pickens Biomedical Building. Biomedical research in the 14-story tower has yielded dramatic discoveries that hold great promise for understanding the nature of human disease.
“Mr. Pickens has long been in the business of giving and helping people,” said Paul M. Bass, chairman of Southwestern Medical Foundation at the time of the gift. “His foundation’s groundbreaking philanthropic approach will help our foundation significantly increase our long-range fundraising capabilities and provide a challenge for other donors to ensure their giving has much greater, collective impact. On behalf of thousands of people who will benefit from Mr. Pickens’ generosity, we are extremely grateful to him.”
The Medical Center has three degree-granting institutions: UT Southwestern Medical School, UT Southwestern Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, and UT Southwestern School of Health Professions. The schools train more than 4,700 medical, graduate, and health professions students, residents, and postdoctoral fellows each year. Ongoing support from federal agencies such as the National Institutes of Health, along with foundations, individuals, and corporations, provide about $415.5 million per year to fund more than 3,300 research projects. Faculty and residents provide care to nearly 92,000 hospitalized patients and oversee more than 2.1 million outpatient visits a year.
Its three-part mission is to educate the next generation of leaders in patient care, biomedical science, and disease prevention; conduct high-impact research; and deliver patient care that brings UT Southwestern’s scientific advances to the bedside – focusing on quality, safety, and service.
For more information, visit www.utsouthwestern.edu.
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