SAN ANTONIO (Sunday, Jan. 6, 2008)—Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long, an Austin couple who share a deep love for Texas and its citizens, donated $25 million to The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio on Dec. 31. The gift, announced today by Health Science Center President Francisco G. Cigarroa, M.D., will establish permanent endowments toward scholarships for students, faculty recruitment and retention, and research of diabetes and other diseases most affecting the people of South Texas.
The cash gift matches the largest single gift in Health Science Center history and is one of the largest single gifts in the history of The University of Texas System. The $25 million gift establishes the Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Scholarship, Research and Teaching Fund.
“This gift so beautifully demonstrates Joe and Terry’s love for their native Texas and their belief that they have been blessed,” President Cigarroa said. “They are committed to leaving the state a better place. Through the Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Presidential Scholarship Program established in 2000 at the Health Science Center, they have already assisted dozens of medical students from South Texas and the border region. This latest major gift expands that legacy and will forever transform the education of health professionals in our state.”
-MORE-
Page 2—Longs donate $25 million
The Longs’ previous donations of $943,200 to the Health Science Center have provided full scholarships to medical students who intend to return home to the South Texas/Border Region to practice. The new $25 million gift is their largest to any institution and provides:
• $12.5 million for student scholarship endowments in medicine, nursing, graduate and physician assistant studies;
• $6.25 million for endowments to advance medical research that alleviates suffering and focuses on diabetes and other illnesses that are most prevalent in South Texas; and
• $6.25 million for faculty enrichment endowments to support research and teaching.
In honor of this wide-reaching gift, The University of Texas System Board of Regents authorized the naming of the central campus in San Antonio to the Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Campus.
“The Board is tremendously grateful to the Longs for this remarkable gift,” Regents’ Vice Chairman James R. Huffines said. “Their continuing generosity to The University of Texas System and their deep commitment to the health, cultural enrichment and education of their fellow Texans is widely known. We are very proud to name the Health Science Center’s central campus after Joe and Teresa in recognition of their vision and their unselfish investment in a better future for all Texans.”
Mr. Long, the son of an oilfield electrician, was born in San Antonio and spent his early childhood in Sonora, Texas, a town on Interstate 10 about 170 miles northwest of San Antonio. When he was 8, his family moved to Leon County in Central Texas, where the family lived in the towns of Oakwood and later Centerville.
Mr. Long received his undergraduate degree at UT Austin and his law degree from the UT Law School. He has been a successful attorney specializing in administrative law, mostly banking and savings and loan law, and a highly successful chairman and chief executive officer of a bank.
-MORE-
Page 3—Longs donate $25 million
Mrs. Long grew up in Premont, a town on State Highway 281 about 75 miles north of the Rio Grande Valley. She holds a doctorate in education from UT Austin and, among her many roles, served as a consultant for the U.S. Office of Education on Migrant Education and the Head Start Program.
The Longs are world travelers, deeply committed to education and avid supporters of the arts, including opera. They also support programs at UT Austin, where one of their gifts, $10 million, established a permanent endowment for the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies. The Longs also donated $20 million to renovate Austin’s Palmer Auditorium into the Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Center for the Performing Arts.
The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio is the leading research institution in South Texas and one of the major health sciences universities in the world. With an operating budget of $576 million, the Health Science Center is the chief catalyst for the $15.3 billion biosciences and health care sector in San Antonio’s economy. The Health Science Center has had an estimated $35 billion impact on the region since inception and has expanded to six campuses in San Antonio, Laredo, Harlingen and Edinburg. More than 22,000 graduates (physicians, dentists, nurses, scientists and allied health professionals) serve in their fields, including many in Texas. Health Science Center faculty are international leaders in cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, aging, stroke prevention, kidney disease, orthopaedics, research imaging, transplant surgery, psychiatry and clinical neurosciences, pain management, genetics, nursing, allied health, dentistry and many other fields.