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| Pharmacy students sign the steel beam to be placed atop the new Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences building. |
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$30 Million Gift Sets School of Pharmacy on Course
By Shannon Casey I November 8, 2004
A $30 million gift to the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences will provide the fledgling school the ammunition to build to recruit new faculty, buy needed equipment and build a new auditorium. It also will create a new endowment to secure the school's future.
At
a press conference Thursday,
UCSD officials announced
they had received the generous
gift -- the largest ever
to UCSD Health Sciences
-- from The Skaggs Institute
for Research. In recognition,
the school has been named
the Skaggs School of Pharmacy
and Pharmaceutical Sciences.
"This generous and visionary gift is a cornerstone moment for Pharmaceutical Sciences," said Chancellor Marye Anne Fox. "This leadership gift will leverage the investment made by the State of California and helps ensure the educational and research goals of the school will have a profound impact on the health and welfare of our greater community."
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| Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences Building rendering. |
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L.S. "Sam" Skaggs, founder of The Skaggs Institute for Research, is nationally recognized as a pioneer in the retail drug store and grocery business and as a generous philanthropist.
"Support of this new pharmacy school was a natural fit for my family and The Skaggs Research Institute because UCSD shares our strong dedication to the future of medicine," said Claudia Skaggs Luttrell, president of The Skaggs Institute for Research. "We are honored to become part of the UCSD team."
Of the $30 million given, $10 million is designated in current use funds for the school's start-up costs, including faculty recruitment and purchase of specialized equipment, and $20 million will be used to establish an endowment fund to be used for the school's highest priorities as determined by the dean.
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| Chancellor
Marye Anne Fox
and DeanPalmer
Taylor display
a rendering
of the new Skaggs
School building
with press conference
attendees. |
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The School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences was established in 2002 to meet the growing demand for and dramatic changes in pharmaceutical education. It is the only public pharmacy school located in Southern California and one of only two public pharmacy schools in the state. The school's pioneering research program emphasizes pharmacogenomics (tailoring drug therapies for patients based on their unique genetic profiles), bioinformatics (managing and analyzing data using advanced computing techniques) and computational drug design.
The university is constructing a state-of-the-art, 104,000-square-foot facility for the new school, located in the heart of the UCSD Health Sciences campus. Following the press announcement Thursday, Fox, Luttrell, Edward W. Holmes, vice chancellor of Health Sciences and dean of the School of Medicine, Palmer Taylor, dean of the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, and community supporters and dozens of pharmacy students signed the last steel beam for the building. The commemorative beam was then hoisted by crane to the top of the new building, where it will be visible from a stairway once construction is complete.
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| Press conference attendees gather after watching the commemorative beam be lifted by crane to the top of the new Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences building. |
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