UNC Pharmacy School Receives $100M Donation from Eshelman

The Eshelman School of Pharmacy at UNC just received a staggering $100 million gift from its namesake.

“While our origin and our history are a matter of great pride, what is really significant is what we do today,” said UNC Chancellor Carol Folt. “We, and all great universities, must stay relevant, and valuable to society by changing with the times; by innovating, being leaders in that, and by building communities that are crucibles of creativity.”

Folt was speaking to a packed tent full of pharmacy students, faculty, alumni and media on Wednesday outside Kerr Hall at UNC on Wednesday.

Sharing the platform to her left sat UNC President Tom Ross, and North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory. To her right sat pharmaceutical executive and 1972 UNC-Chapel Hill graduate Fred Eshelman, whose $38 million donation to the pharmacy school put his name on the building in 2008.

Ten million dollars of that went to cancer research, and $20 million went toward creating an innovation fund to jumpstart new research projects.

Those assembled inside and spilling outside the tent Wednesday were there to hear Folt’s announcement that Eshelman had committed a new gift of $100 million to the School of Pharmacy – the largest in the school’s history, and the largest ever to a pharmacy school in the U.S.

It will create a new center within the school, the Eshelman Institute for Innovation. One of its functions, said Folt, will be to spur economic development throughout North Carolina.

McCrory focused on that aspect in his remarks. He referred back to something he said during a speech he made at Memorial Hall on Oct. 12, when UNC was celebrating its 221st birthday.

“My goal is for North Carolina to become the third vertex of what we call the ‘Innovation Triangle,’” said McCrory. “The nation’s Innovation Triangle. You have Silicon Valley; you have Boston and New York. The other choice is right here, in North Carolina, with Chapel Hill being the capitol of this national innovation triangle.”

Ross thanked Eshelman “from the depths of my heart and soul,” and noted that UNC’s School of Pharmacy is ranked No. 2 in the U.S.

“I looked this morning, just to see who No. 1 is – I really have never heard of The University of California at San Francisco,” he said, to laughter. “And I only have one thing to say to them: They’d better watch out.”

Dean of Pharmacy Robert Blouin also thanked Eshelman, not only for the huge monetary gifts, but for his leadership and guidance over the years.

Blouin spoke about how Eshelman has influenced his view of the public’s expectations of UNC, as a research-intensive university.

“They expect us to lead,” said Blouin. “They don’t expect us to follow best practices. They expect us to create best practices. They don’t expect us to teach out of text books. They expect us to write those text books.”

Eshelman closed the afternoon ceremony with his remarks, and he emphasized that leadership point strongly.

“We must be relentless in our pursuit of pre-eminence,” said Eschelman. “And I mean pre-eminence.”

He said there’s a tough environment when it comes to university funding right now, and called upon the private sector to do more.