$225 Million Given To Penn School Of Medicine

The oldest medical school in the U.S. named the University Of Pennsylvania School Of Medicine received a remarkable donation of $225 million from Raymond Perelman and his wife. By far, it is the largest single donation to the institution for the past 246 years.

The generous cash donation will help increase the School of Medicine's financial budget. It will significantly increase the financial aid budget by at least 20% for the class of 2012. It will be used to hire the physicians, researchers and scientists. Not only that, there will be support provided for research as announced by the Philadelphia institution. In addition, it will change its name to Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine.

Here's more about Raymond Perelman. He is a Penn Medicine trustee and the known chairman of RGP Holdings Inc. It is a privately owned investing company. Ronald Perelman, parent of Raymond Perelman, is the billionaire chairman and also the executive officer of REV Holdings LLC.

According to Amy Gutmann, Penn's president, ,the gift given to them by Raymond and Ruth encouraged them to double their efforts in making Penn a global model for comprehensive academic medical center. The cash donation is transformational and serves as a good motivation.

The cash donated has brought Penn's Making History capital campaign to a higher lever. It has garnered a total of $3.31 billion which is almost 95% of the campaign goal by June 2012. They are close to the goal of getting the $3.5 billion. With the donation given today, the Perelman couple has given more than $250 million to the campaign.

Penn's endowment has risen by 9.6% to $5.67 billion in 2010. The university also got the 11^th largest amount among other U.S. and Canadian schools basing on the information given by the National Association of College and University Business Officers.

The Perelman couple gave Penn $25 million in 2005. The money was used to build the Ruth and Raymond Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine. The Center for Advanced Medicine is included in the University of Pennsylvania Health System. The center opened its doors in the year 2008. Also, they offered a professorship in internal medicine.

Ruth and Raymond Perelman believe that the future of medicine relies on the ability to create world-class clinicians and researchers. They are confident enough that the outstanding facility and students from Penn will make remarkable contributions to medicine in the following years to come.

University Of Pennsylvania School Of Medicine was founded in 1765. Currently, there are 2,200 students and trainees and has a total of 1,800 faculty members. Last but not the least, the National Institution of Health gave an award to the school in a monetary form. The school received $508 million in the 2010 fiscal year.