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UNC receives largest donation ever

Update, 6:00 p.m.:

State and University leaders praised UNC alumnus Fred Eshelman for his commitment to excellence as they announced his $100 million donation to the Eshelman School of Pharmacy Wednesday.

UNC system President Tom Ross and Governor Pat McCrory noted the importance of the donation not just to the pharmacy school or the University, but to the state as a whole.

Ross said Eshelman understands that UNC is the economic engine of the state, and his donation recognizes the University’s value.

“His investment is dramatic, historic, and a statement of trust and confidence,” he said. “It is tangible validation of the importance of this place to our state."

Ross called the School of Pharmacy the best in the country, although he recognized that it is currently ranked second based on federal research funding.

“I looked this morning just to see who number one is,” he said. "I really had never heard of the University of California San Francisco, and I only have one thing to say to them: they better watch out."

Turning his back to the audience to directly address Eshelman, Ross thanked him at length.

“Thank you on behalf of the University of North Carolina, and thank you from the depths of my heart and soul,” he said. “Your generosity is overwhelming, and it is unmatched. It is indeed historic. The University is forever in your debt, and our gratitude is without measure."

After the announcement event, Eshelman said he was feeling relaxed and looking eagerly to more progress at the pharmacy school.

“The sky is actually the limit. Some of the science that’s going on here is amazing, and some of the stuff that’s being spun out of Carolina and into commercial companies, I think, is really going to start to move the needle,” Eshelman said.

Eshelman said UNC and other public universities have struggled with funding recently, but he expects UNC to be at the forefront of further progress.

“We’re hoping that the level of public support will, at worst, stay even. We’re hoping we can get it to start increasing a little bit, as the economy recovers, you know, more tax comes in,” he said.

“But in the meantime, we gotta shore it up, and more importantly, we gotta get that extra level in there so that Carolina can continue to move forward instead of getting mired down for lack of resources."

McCrory said public funding will “continue to be stretched,” but spending the money strategically will help it have greater effect.

“We’re also going to be much more strategic in changing our policies with regard to helping with the commercialization of much of the research that’s being done at Chapel Hill, at State, at Duke and Wake Forest,” he said.

McCrory said teamwork among state universities will be important in the future, especially between UNC’s science programs and N.C. State University’s engineering program.

“We’ve got to convert more of our research into commercialization, which in turn brings the entrepreneurs and the capital investment,” he said.

Chancellor Carol Folt said the University expects the Institute to generate money, because faculty will be able to attract grants with the research they do there.

“Over the next few years, we’re going to see this center for innovation growing,” she said. "So it is actually going to be linear, but it’s going to be exploding from the innovation it produces."

"And (Eshelman)’s going to hold us to that, too. He’s a tough — he’s going to ask all the right questions, and that’s important."

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On Wednesday, philanthropist and UNC alumnus Fred Eshelman made a $100 million commitment to the Eshelman School of Pharmacy.

The donation is the largest from an individual donor in the University's history and the largest sum ever given to a pharmacy school in the United States.

Eshelman said the decades-long academic fraud revealed in the Wainstein report in October did not make him doubt his decision to donate.

"We just can't get distracted by that," he said. "We gotta move forward, we gotta continue the excellence that this University is known for, make corrections where we need to, but let's focus where the success is."

Chancellor Carol Folt said now is the time to invest in the University.

"Dr. Eshelman is standing straight up and saying, 'You don't back down from what you do well,'" she said.

The donation is a commitment, not an immediate gift, but Folt said the University plans to begin using the money right away.

The donation will allow the pharmacy school to create the Eshelman Institute for Innovation, but Folt and Robert Blouin, dean of the pharmacy school, emphasized that faculty from across the University will be able to collaborate within the Institute.

"The intention of the donor is that all the resources go to the innovation center, but the donor's intent goes well beyond the School of Pharmacy," Blouin said.

Blouin said he has known Eshelman for almost 12 years and believes that part of Eshelman's entrepreneurial success has come from a willingness to take risks. The Institute will support this attitude.

"The core of the concept (for the Institute) is to really encourage and nurture ideas that in the past might have been too risky," Folt said.

The Institute will allow researchers to "think beyond that next experiment," she said.

Eshelman said he has watched and supported the pharmacy school's success for a number of years now, and he wants it to continue to excel.

"They can't do that without funding, and given the situation with public funding, we just have to keep filling the tank," he said.

After discussions about the donation with Eshelman in Wilmington earlier this year, Blouin said he told David Routh, vice chancellor for development, that the pharmacy school would start working with the money as early as Jan. 2.

Eshelman graduated from the pharmacy school in 1972 and has previously donated $38 million to the school. It was named for him in 2008.

"This is a gift of confidence not only in our school, but in the University," Blouin said.

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