At NSU’s 20th annual Celebration of Excellence Event on Jan. 27, President George Hanbury announced that Drs. Kiran and Pallavi Patel Family Foundation, Inc. and chairman NSU’s Board of Trustees, Ron Assaf and his wife, Kathy, will both donate to the university and help it achieve its fundraising goal as part of the Realizing Potential Campaign three years early.
The Patel’s gift will go to NSU’s College of Allopathic Medicine, which will be renamed the Dr. Kiran C. Patel College of Allopathic Medicine, and the Assaf’s will be in support of NSU’s College of Nursing, which will become the Ron and Kathy Assaf College of Nursing.
The Patel’s $25 million gift comes after their donation of $200 million in December which renamed NSU’s College of Osteopathic Medicine and the College of Health Care Sciences to the Dr. Kiran C. Patel College of Osteopathic Medicine and the Dr. Pallavi Patel College of Health Care Sciences and invested in the new Tampa Bay regional campus site in Clearwater. The Patels’ newest gift will provide scholarships for medical students in need of financial support.
“When you look at national trends, all the more established universities and medical schools are going towards less and less tuition,” said Johannes W. Vieweg, dean of NSU’s College of Allopathic Medicine. “That’s really the trend that we would like to follow, that we provide as many opportunities as we can.”
Their donation to the College of Osteopathic Medicine, which was the largest gift in NSU history, made Kiran C. Patel the only person of Indian heritage to have a medical school named after him in the US. The most recent gift, that renamed the College of Allopathic Medicine, has now made him the first person in the US to have two medical schools under his name.
The Assafs are long-time donors to the university and have donated more than $5 million to NSU.
“We are really supporters of nursing, and I think it’s one of the noblest of professions,” said Ron Assaf. “Anyone, man or woman, can get into it. We are very pleased to have the opportunity.”
As for the impact of the donation, Marcella Rutherford, dean of NSU’s College of Nursing, said students will begin to see improvements and changes in the college come the new semester.
“The impact will begin in the fall semester, with abilities to use funding for scholarships, community outreach and different initiatives to enhance student education,” said Rutherford.
She said it is also an amazing opportunity for a college of nursing to be supported and acknowledged by the greater community, and especially the Assafs.
As for NSU’s Realizing Potential Campaign — which contained the first philanthropic campaign in NSU’s 54-year history at $250 million — being reached so early, President Hanbury encouraged all those at the university to honor the tremendous feats that have been achieved.
“First of all, we need to celebrate and take a little breather. But, as in anything that you’ve become successful in, you don’t want to be lulled into complacency. So, after our celebration, which will be brief, we do seek to always look, even though we may be the best, to be better,” said Hanbury, “and as such, I will be working with students, faculty and staff and the board of trustees to go beyond Vision 2020.”
