$185M Campaign Draws To Close

Just months away from its anticipated close, a multi-million dollar fundraising campaign intended to bolster educational programs, endowed chairs and renovations at Harvard Medical School has almost reached its goal, schools officials say.

"We are almost at our goal of $185 million," Medical School Dean Daniel C. Tosteson '44 said in a recent interview.

The campaign is wrapping up at the same time as a much larger, University-wide fund drive is approaching the planning stages. The Medical School plans to participate in this drive--which is expected to net about $2.5 billion--as well, Tosteson said.

Also, the Dean has cited the need for short campaigns even after the University-wide campaign is completed.

The Medical School campaign, started five years ago, is slated to end on December 31, 1991.

"By that time, we will have raised well over our goal," Tosteson says.

Last April, Tosteson said the campaign had netted $155 million. Currently, the drive is within $10 million of its goal.

Tosteson says that all of the money raised will be for capital funds. Of the $185 million expected, $135 million will go to educational programs and endowed chairs, the remainders going to construction and renovation of buildings currently underway.

"Some of the categories have been oversubscribed," Tosteson says. For example while the school had an original goal of $27 million for endowed clinical chairs, over $70 million has been raised for that purpose.

"This is a wonderful glue to hold together the consortium of institutions involved in Harvard Medical School," he says, since the faculty is scattered among the Medical School and the 13 Harvard-affiliated teaching hospitals in the area.

Last months, ABC network founder Leonard H. Goldenson '27 and his wife Isabelle established a research fellowship in their names in honor of William Berenberg '36, professor of pediatrics emeritus at the Medical School. The fellowship will further research in cerebral palsy.

Tosteson says he is also pleased that the campaign will meet its goal of $16 million for student financial aid.

"We have made students financial aid a very high priority for our future," says the dean.

In April, syndicated columnist Eppie P. Lederer, better known as Ann Landers, donated $1 million for students financial aid towards this goal. The fund will be known as the Ann Landers Fellowship.

Tosteson has also said that he wants to make the New Pathway curriculum, begun several years ago under his tenure as dean, a top priority. The program is designed to educate students in small tutorials, emphasizing patient-doctor relationships and ethical issues, rather than rote memorization of huge volumes of medical facts.

The Medical School class of 1991 is the first graduating class to have been educated entirely under the New Pathway, says the dean. "There is a feeling of commitment to and enthusiasm for the educational process that is vigorous and healthy," he says.

Tosteson says that the success of the fundraising campaign is largely a result of talented campaign organizers and a high alumni participation rate.

"I am delighted at the support that has been coming from many people," Tosteson says. He cited the late Colman M. Mockler Jr. '55, who was a member of the Harvard Corporation and served as co-chair of the campaign, as instrumental in its success. In March, Ellen Gordon, an official with the Tootsie Roll Company in Chicago, III., was appointed to head the Campaign in Mockler's place.

The dean says that the level of participation by alumni was remarkably good for the Medical School, whose alumni number about 7000.

"Our alumni were tremendously helpful," says Tosteson. He added that they will have contributed $60 million to the drive by its end.

In the past, Tosteson has said that even with the recent fund drive, the Medical School can still use additional money, because it would provide financial stability and allow greater latitude in initiatives that outside sponsors might not necessarily be interested in.

Tosteson says that a formal celebration of the drive is planned for next March.